The Light Unfettered
by Teninshigen
Summary: Humanity stopped producing heroes a long time ago. These days, running towards a scream is a shortcut to an early grave. Trust me on that. Still, a lack of heroes doesn't necessarily mean they're not still needed - and sometimes, you get lucky enough to fill that role. Unless you're me, of course, in which case you end up as an abomination against God. (Fallen Angel!SI/OC)
1. Pilot Light

_'Mistakes were made. Mistakes were most_ definitely _made.'_

The man in front of me, dressed in an olive jacket and grey cargo trousers with a cap overshadowing his face, shifted from foot to foot, tossing the several-inch-knife he was holding between each hand as he moved.

I swallowed, feeling my heartbeat in my throat and ears, very aware that the only thing approximating a weapon I had on me was a Leatherman Squirt multitool with a blade measuring barely three centimetres, if that.

I didn't dare go for it either – the fucker was fast, I knew that from the steady throb in my side where he'd snap-kicked me before I could reach him as I ran into the alley, and my knife was buried in a shaped pocket in my jeans that made retrieving it difficult.

All in all, my situation - which had started at shit - was deteriorating by the second, and I was getting jittery from all the adrenaline entering my bloodstream.

And of course, it was my own fucking fault.

 _'I always wondered why those people in horror movies ran_ toward _screaming.'_ I thought to myself, breathing deeply and seeing the edges of my vision darken as they became less important than the man in front of me...

And the woman standing behind him, clothes torn and a panicked, fearful expression on her tear-tracked face.

 _'I guess it's just the human thing to do though.'_

The man hadn't said a word; instead, he must have been watching my eyes – waiting for me to shift my focus even slightly – because that was when he lunged forwards with the knife in his right hand, reaching out with his left to grab me and drag me onto the blade.

I twitched badly, backstepping into the wall behind me and _just_ out of the knife's reach – then I grabbed the wrist of the hand reaching for me and did the first thing I thought of. I grabbed the elbow of that same arm with my other hand before _wrenching_ in different directions.

There was a sickening _snap_ sound as the arm broke, and the man screamed – right in my face, startling me into letting go as he shoulder-checked me into the wall harder, cracking my head on the brick before he tossed me to the ground and then came down knife-first.

It skipped off one of my ribs before biting deep into my lower right torso, probably puncturing a lung knowing my luck – but for karmic balance, the reflexive curling of my spine from the pain launched my forehead into his nose, breaking it instantly and knocking his cap off his head.

The man reared back, and I got a good look at his face for the first time since I charged into the alley.

He was pale – pale like marble, like alabaster; not a colour human skin should have. His eyes were off too, the colour of blooming lavender, something I didn't know was possible in human genetics.

His hair was black and wavy, and I noticed that it seemed to be in oddly good condition for belonging to someone hanging around trying to rape a woman in an Aberdeen alley - it was a similar trait to his skin which, apart from its pallor, showed not a single blemish anywhere; not a scar, not a spot, I couldn't even spot any stubble.

Well, the big red splash-mark and accompanying downward trail that spread outward from his nose might have counted as a blemish - but under that, the skin bore more resemblance to carefully worked marble than flesh.

All in all, he was surprisingly good-looking for a murdering rapist; although, the maddened rage in his eyes and the snarl that seemed to have permanently twisted his mouth into a jagged line certainly were a serious detriment.

I tried to roll out from under him while he was rearing back, but instead found myself trapped by his weight and made the knife-wound worse with my wrenching.

I screamed between my clenched teeth, feeling blood on my lip from where I was biting it, then choked on the sensation of the knife withdrawing from my body before it plunged back in again, this time directly into my stomach.

I couldn't contain the scream this time, so instead I loosed it right into the now-closer face of my assailant, splattering him with blood and saliva as I vented pain and rage into him point-blank.

He flinched backwards for a moment, and I shot both of my arms forward, wrapping my fingers around his throat with the thumbs over his adam's apple and then _squeezing_.

His eyes immediately started to bulge from his skull as he choked, and he withdrew the knife from my body once more to try and slice at my arms.

I started yelling through the tears pouring from my eyes as my left arm came under attack, dozens of cuts ranging from almost-non-existent to seemingly-fatal opening along the limb – the number decreasing as the man's struggles weakened, his face turning red then blue as he struggled before he finally dropped the knife, slumping and causing his entire weight to fall on my arms where they were still choking him.

Blood, tears and other things were streaked across my face, both mine and from my attacker's nose, and as I struggled to breathe I could feel some of the mess go down my throat.

I almost immediately felt the urge to vomit it back up again, but figured that would cost me precious air.

Air that was almost as precious as blood...blood which I was _still losing._

Trying to shake off the cotton wool in my head, I managed to tip the man atop me over so he fell at my left side, then scooted out from under him by pushing with my feet and dragging with my right arm.

My right arm was being less than cooperative; I could barely even see it beneath the blood and the ruins of my hoodie.

Reaching the opposite wall, I managed to sit up against it, casting my eyes down to get a better look at myself.

Two stab wounds; one in my stomach, one in what was probably my lung and would explain the difficulty breathing. My left arm was comprehensively fucked and I wondered if I'd ever be able to use it again. The back of my head felt hot and damp, which meant it was bleeding, which meant I probably had a concussion or a broken skull or both.

I glanced around the alley, wondering if maybe I could make some bandages and then go for help; and in doing so, I noticed something was missing.

 _'Huh...the woman's gone...'_ I observed, looking slowly both ways and trying to blink past the darkness encroaching on my vision. _'Good...maybe she'll bring some help...or the police...'_

A wrenching cough brought my attention back to the comatose body across the alley from me – or, rather, what was _meant_ to be a comatose body.

Instead, my assailant was up on their knees, caressing their throat with their unbroken arm.

 _'Well, fuck me sideways.'_

There was a grinding of metal on stone as my attacker retrieved his knife before turning to me, clambering to his feet and staring down at me.

"You're an uppity piece of shit for being nothing more than a lowly human, aren't you?" He rasped, the words thin and reedy but considerably better than I would have expected from someone whose larynx I'd done my utmost to crush into paste.

The man (though I was starting to wonder, somewhere in my fuzzy brain, if that was quite the right descriptor) glanced down the alley and glared at the empty space, giving me a chance to slip my right hand into its pocket. "And it seems you have cost me my entertainment too." He turned back to me, spitting to the side.

It came out mixed with blood and – probably to add insult to considerable injury – landed on my sliced-up arm.

"Trash humans like you shouldn't try to play at being heroes." He sneered. "All of _them_ died long ago. All your race produces these days are rats and worthless garbage."

Stalking forward, he flipped the knife into a reverse-grip, the blade pointing down at me as he raised it high. "Die like the pest you are – and rejoice in the honour that comes from dying at the hands of Malachi!"

The now-named Malachi reared back, preparing to bring his knife down into my chest – probably my heart, if I had to guess.

So I took the opening he gave me and used my as-yet unharmed legs to launch myself forward, knocking him onto his back as I flipped the knife out of my multi-tool, having retrieved it from my pocket while he was busy sneering.

I dragged myself up his body with gritted teeth, trying to trap his limbs with my body-weight while I clutched my little knife in my fist. At the same time, Malachi was shaking off the knock to his head and bringing his knife back around to stab at me.

We both moved at the same time.

His face turned shocked as my insignificant blade knife stabbed deep into the side of his throat and then tore across it, opening the entire assembly to the air and fountaining blood over both of us as the arteries were severed.

Meanwhile, I let out a soundless scream as his knife plunged into the gap between my neck and my collarbone, the metal piercing deep into my shoulder and probably emerging in my respiratory system, if my sudden inability to breath or speak was any indicator.

Malachi kept trying to speak – or so I thought, based on the bubbling of the blood frothing from his open neck. Meanwhile, I collapsed bodily onto him, not particularly appreciating my position but finding it far too difficult to move myself.

I idly watched as my vision darkened, the shadows lengthening and reaching toward me, the light dying away. _'So, this is what it's like to bleed out.'_ I pondered slowly, starting to feel rather cold. _'Hm...'_

I managed the titanic effort of rolling my eye upward to see the face of the dying man I'd collapsed on – managing to see the rage and the fear that warred on his features...

His glassy eyes told me more though. _'Well how about that; your face really_ can _freeze that way.'_

The dark moved closer, and I found myself trying to hum – thinking the words along even as I failed to produce the sound. _'Innocence is gone...and what was right is wrong..._

 _'So I bare my skin...'_

I couldn't feel my limbs, now – everything was going cold and numb, sensation spiralling away into oblivion.

 _'And I count my sins...'_

So much that I'd still wanted to do...my parents would get a call from the police instead of my visit home next weekend; Heather would never get a response to that last message she sent me; the guys back in the apartment would probably wonder what happened to me for a couple of days until the University told them what had happened...

Well, shit – I'd caused a lot of trouble, hadn't I?

 _'And I close my eyes...'_

There was no world beyond the end of my nose, now – just shadows.

My eyelids were so heavy...

 _'And I take it in...'_

It's dark.

It's cold.

I'm alone.

So...this is...the end...

 _'And I'm...blee...ding...o...u...'_

* * *

As a teenager bled to death atop a corpse in an Aberdeen back-alley, he didn't have the sight to witness what came next.

As the last dregs of consciousness fled from the creature named Malachi, a golden light began to shimmer across its skin – a pattern wrought in light itself, depicting sweeping characters unlike any seen before on Earth.

Or, rather, _that_ Earth.

As the design blazed into life, it rose from the skin, wrapping itself around the cadaver like ropes or vines – and, when it reached the corpse laying atop the body into which it had been engraved, it hesitated only momentarily before encompassing it as well.

The light's work continued until both corpses were ensconced within it, cocooned in golden light – at which point it began to wrap itself tighter and tighter, compressing itself down until it occupied far less space than anything containing two bodies had a right to, before it vanished into thin air.

The search for Drew Campbell would go on for several weeks before he was announced legally dead. A funeral was held for him in the same church where he was baptised, by the same reverend who performed the ceremony – a friend of the family.

His family each visited the grave every day for weeks, then after that always at least once a week until they became too old to travel – and eventually, his younger brother would become a father himself, and tell his children about the uncle they never got to meet.

Life went on in the world without Drew Campbell.

But elsewhere, Drew Campbell went on without his world.

* * *

Across a divide which was simultaneously thinner than paper and wider than the Universe in which Drew Campbell lay dying, a being sat at its desk staring at the paper which covered the wood.

The being resembled a human in all ways; looking at them, it would be impossible to tell them apart from any other twenty-to-thirty year-old man, with his black hair and goatee, dressed in a violet yukata as he sank into the deep chair he occupied.

The golden follicles that spilled over his brow, fading into existence from the black of the rest of his hair, were perhaps a bit odd – but it could be explained by dye. At the same time, his lavender eyes were a touch different – but lenses or simply odd genetics could provide an answer to their existence.

No, though he was perhaps a bit stand-out, there wasn't anything to say this being wasn't a baseline human.

Except if they knew his name.

An old name.

A _powerful_ name.

A name written in the stars and heavens when they were still young but it was old, a name that still echoed in the halls of Heaven itself though its owner's footfalls had long since fallen silent there; a name that struck fear or awe into the hearts of those who heard it. A name-

"AZAZEL! HAVE YOU FINISHED THAT PAPERWORK YET?!"

A name whose owner didn't appreciate his subordinate yelling after all the sake he'd drunk the previous night.

Groaning and massaging his temples, the Fallen Angel Governor, Leader of the Grigori, opened bleary eyes and glared at the doorway to his office. "C'mon Shem, can't you just give me a few minutes?" He complained. "You know what Inari's stuff does to me."

"And so do you, but that doesn't stop you drinking it by the barrel!" The other Fallen's voice declared, drawing a wry chuckle from his leader.

"Ah, but it's always worth it for a night with that vixen!" He declared, drawing a pair of dismayed groans from beyond the door.

"I can't believe we're still letting him make that pun after two hundred years…" Baraquiel complained, followed by Shemhazai sighing.

"If we just keep letting him do it, he'll eventually grow out of it. Just like his Blazing Shi-"

With a sound like tearing paper, the skin and yukata over a spot between Azazel's shoulder blades bulged and then erupted in a shower of ink-black feathers as a new limb grew there.

Extending for as long as Azazel himself was tall and then half again, the wing was the kind of black reserved for black holes and the void between galaxies, an endless darkness that almost seemed to look back if you stared at for long enough.

That same eldritch limb then extended itself seemingly of its own accord to punch straight through the wooden door and knock the Fallen Angel on the other side off his chair and to the floor.

A groan drifted through the hole in the wood, and looking through it, Azazel could see Baraqiel's face as he leaned over to check on his fellow Fallen.

The first Vice Governor of the Fallen Angels was another very human figure; the image of a gruff male in his late thirties, a full head of black hair still present in a spiky beard that framed his entire face and jutted out at the sideburns, skin that was tanned but not leathery, and eyes a somewhat darker shade of lavender than Azazel's.

He was dressed in a white shirt and black slacks with suspenders, looking like he wouldn't be out of place lounging around in a black-and-white mafia movie somewhere. "Perhaps. Who knows; maybe you'll grow out of mentioning that every week eventually, too."

Shemhazai groaned from his position amidst the broken floorboards, where his head was smoking slightly amidst the cloud of wood particles that used to be the office floor. His appearance was that of a pale, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with silvery-white hair and pale lavender eyes.

Being the slightly more serious of the trio on a day-to-day basis, he usually wore his 'working' outfit around the headquarters - namely, a purple beret (which was also part of _every other outfit he owned_ ), a purple trench coat over a black vest, white pants and black boots.

He picked himself up out of the wooden crater, rubbing the utterly unmarked side of his head and shaking it slightly to rid it of wood dust, then glanced at the damage to the door and floor.

There was a faint golden shimmer over both areas, then wood seemed to crawl out of thin air, writhing into place and taking the position of what had been there before.

An almost-invisible twitch of one finger disturbed the air currents in the room, causing a momentary wind which gathered the clouds of splinters and wood dust before carrying them into a bin set against the wall.

In under five seconds, the room looked exactly as it had done before Azazel's actions.

The second Vice Governor of the Grigori shook his head, sending a baleful look into the wood that currently shut Azazel's desk away from his and Baraqiel's, allowing the Governor to sit in complete darkness, nurse his hangover and procrastinate over doing his paperwork _again._

Or, in other words, do exactly the same thing as he'd been doing for the past three weeks as he waited for some new fancy to take him.

Shemhazai himself had to admit that he was almost hoping for another border skirmish with the Devils or perhaps some new instance of Kokabiel's war-mongering, just so long as it would break the monotony.

The Underworld was a far cry from Heaven; there was never boredom among the Host, but down in the shadows of this sunless world, the dreary eternity dragged on and on, shifting like molasses.

It might be a life away from the constantly restrictive laws and regulations of Heaven...but _dammit,_ he really needed something to _do-!_

Both Shemhazai and Baraqiel turned towards the door to their office at the same time, a few seconds before someone knocked on the wood.

"Enter!" Baraqiel called, and a Fallen Angel with the appearance of a brunette woman in her teens pushed open the door.

She was dressed in the white overcoat which signified the Grigori's medical personnel, beneath which would be hospital scrubs conjured for the day ahead and easily dissolved to constituent magic at night so as to prevent any need for washing - but more important to the Governors was the worried expression she wore.

"What is it...Coretha?" Shemhazai asked, recalling her name as she was one of the more recent six-wing Fallen. She was a fairly young thing all told - barely into the second half of her second millennium.

"The Reclamation Script for Malachi triggered…" She began, drawing a tired sigh from both Shemhazai and Baraqiel - both of whom knew their leader would have closed his eyes in his office.

He always took such failures harder than anyone else.

"So, yet another brother lost to us…" Baraqiel noted, before frowning as he noted the vaguely shifty expression on Coretha's face and the way she fidgeted with her fingers.

"Well...that's what I'm here about…" She began, her nerves increasing by the moment as Shemhazai and Baraqiel stared at her, finding her words failing her - then a pair of warm hands landed on her shoulders, and she looked startled over her shoulder to find the smiling face of Azazel looking back at her.

"Take it easy, Coretha." He told her, squeezing her shoulders lightly. "Breathe deep and let it out, then tell us what you came to."

Nodding somewhat dumbly, the Fallen did as she was bidden. "When the Script returned to the Medical Wing, we expected to find Malachi's corpse; since there haven't been any patients today, we went to get it ready for burial then and there…"

Azazel nodded encouragingly, and Coretha continued. "But when we checked the Homecoming Chamber, we found...well...we're not _sure_ who."

The Governor frowned, bringing a hand up to stroke his goatee. "You mean you don't recognise their appearance?"

Coretha shook her head. "No - but it wasn't just that; we considered something like plastic surgery or some kind of magical shape-shifting, even Malachi somehow getting access to his old powers. That's why we ran some deeper tests.

"Whoever they are, they bear all the traces of the Reclamation Script - but at the same time, they register as someone...as some _thing_...completely different to Malachi."

Azazel raised an eyebrow. "Some _thing?"_

Coretha nodded. "Somehow...the readings we got back from the analysis spells say that they're part-Fallen, part-Human."

Baraqiel stiffened in his seat, while Azazel's eyebrow was joined by its twin. "Well then…" He muttered, his eyes starting to gleam. "That _is_ interesting."

With a casual wave of his hand, a white overcoat not dissimilar to the one worn by Coretha herself appeared over the Fallen's yukata, while a white surgical mask and a hair-net also appeared to adorn him.

Pulling on a pair of elbow-length white gloves, the Fallen Governor turned on his heel and marched out of the office to begin descending the spiral staircase leading up the tower which supported the workspace. "Come, Coretha!" He declared. "We have a mystery to solve - for _science!"_

"A-ah, right Lord Azazel!" The younger Fallen scrambled, scurrying out the door and leaving it to swing close behind her.

In the now silent room, Shemhazai looked over at Baraqiel. The Angel of Lightning's eyes had slid shut as he leaned on his desk, his fingers interlaced as he almost seemed to bow over his own joined hands. "She's still young yet." Shemhazai noted, turning back to his own small mountain of paperwork. "She'll come around in time."

"Should she really, though?" The other Fallen whispered, drawing a shrug from Shemhazai.

"I'm not one to give advice on family matters." He stated. "But when she finally outgrows that human mindset of hers, she'll come to realise holding a grudge means nothing."

Baraqiel grunted. "You and I should know better than most what a 'grudge' can mean, old friend."

Idly, Shemhazai reached over his shoulder, touching the spot from which the first of his ten black wings would appear with a mere thought. "Perhaps." He whispered. "Perhaps."

* * *

I opened my eyes.

Then I blinked, muttered "What the fuck...?" under my breath, and closed them again for a few seconds.

 _'Alright. I_ definitely _bled to death just now; I had the whole fuzzy-thoughts thing, my vision faded to black, I couldn't breathe...yeah, I definitely bled to death.'_

That fact affirmed in my head, I re-opened my eyes, staring at the white-tile ceiling above my head. _'So either I was somehow revived and I'm waking up in a hospital...or...'_

I tried to sit up and get a look at my surroundings – but when I did so, I felt a resistance at my throat, which started light but rapidly increased to _choking_ as I kept moving.

Immediately dropping my head back down, feeling my breath coming quicker as I recalled all-too clearly the feeling of asphyxiation I'd experienced only minutes ago by my reckoning, I instead raised _only_ my head to look down my body-

And found myself lying on a plain white sheet, laid on a bed with a metal frame, surrounded by mint-green hospital curtains – the same colour as the hospital gown I myself was wearing.

But slightly more attention-grabbing were the bands around my wrists and ankles.

Despite their golden-yellow colouration they were almost see-through, obviously not fully corporeal; the best comparison I had was a hologram, light that had been re-ordered into shapes which formed an ethereal image.

Squinting, I found I could get a surprisingly good look at their forms, considering I was looking down the length of my own not-inconsiderable frame...but I supposed the bonds' seemingly light-based composition might have an impact there.

Rather than being actual bonds, I discovered, they were more like loops of characters; characters I didn't recognise, but which swirled and curved to form inhumanly elegant script that seemed almost familiar to me.

They linked together in a ceaseless loop, then seemingly fed into another line that connected to an identical loop around the frame of the bed, acting like mystical handcuffs.

Mystical – because even if I was jumping the gun a bit, I could only attribute bonds like those to magic of some kind.

I blew out a breath, closing my eyes again and thumping my head back against the pillow it was lying on. _'Well, I'm definitely not in Aberdeen anymore. So this is...what? Reincarnation? Possession? Transmigration? An afterlife?'_

There were too many options – too many possibilities, though being under some kind of magical restraint limited them mostly to the more fantastical options.

 _'Well, I'm not going to find out if I just lay here.'_ I decided, looking left and right without raising my head.

The room stretched out on either side of me, lines of the same generic beds-with-curtains that I was lying on pushed up against the white walls while a walkway of sorts had been left clear down the middle of the room. The floor itself was linoleum or something like it, coloured the same white as damn-near everything else in the room.

 _'Maybe this is Limbo.'_ I considered, before starting to test the bindings on my wrists and ankles. _'Well, if so, all the more incentive to find myself something to do – starting with getting on my feet.'_

As expected, my limbs experienced the same gradually increasing resistance as my neck had done, and I paused to think.

 _'Alright – logic dictates that I, of all people, am not going to overcome magical bindings with brute strength. So, how am I going to get around them?'_

Well, that was a simple enough answer. _'If the door is unbreakable, smash the frame.'_

I focussed on my right wrist, and – with a moment's stretching – found that I could wrap my hand around the part of the frame where the 'cuff' was anchored.

Doing so with my left wrist as well and finagling my left ankle until I had hooked my left foot beneath the frame as an extra hold, I started to pull myself as hard as I could toward the left side of the bed, still pulling on the anchoring area of the frame with my right hand.

A few seconds later I heard the squealing start, and that gave me a resurgence of confidence that helped me grit my teeth and pull harder.

The squealing grew louder and louder, the bed-frame deforming, until the metal finally gave up the ghost and snapped.

I took deep breaths, relaxing my hands and foot while the chunk of badly deformed metal slid out of the anchoring loop on my right wrist, leaving the holographic cuff hanging from my wrist like a strange bracelet.

"That...actually worked..." I panted, shaking my head a bit. "Man, I thought it'd be more work than that..."

With my hand free, I twisted to my side as much as I could manage before being stopped by my neck and ankle bindings, managing to get my right hand onto the bed-frame beside my left hand.

With a hand on either side of the left-wrist binding's anchor loop, I started to push and pull at the same time, the metal twisting almost immediately until it too snapped, this time in the space of only a few seconds.

Then, I brought both my hands up to my throat, feeling the strap across it.

It was almost like touching crystal – nearly frictionless, a bit warm, and there was an almost imperceptible vibration beneath my fingertips. It felt like I should almost be able to make some sense of it if I listened closely enough...

But I shook off that distraction, instead working my fingers beneath the band, bracing my elbows against the mattress and _pushing_.

First my elbows, then the area of my back, starting sinking ridiculously deep into the mattress as I kept pushing, leaving me at least three inches deep before I realised I suddenly had a new option available to me.

So I switched my grip, reversing it so my fingers were facing toward my face instead of away, then started to tilt my head forward, touching my chin to my chest.

It took some serious bending of my neck, as well as my spine so I could lower my torso and give myself more clearance, but I finally managed to push my head forward enough beneath the binding that when I stopped pushing, my neck was free of its confines.

I took a few moments to rest, panting as I lay on the bed and finding myself rather surprised that I wasn't a hot, sweaty mess. In fact, I barely even felt tired or sore, despite contorting myself and doing all the pushing and pulling I had done.

A creeping suspicion entered my mind, and I brought my right arm up in front of my face, examining it.

It was my arm – I could tell; I'd been using the same one for eighteen years. I was rather attached to it. Thus, I knew its shade well, knew the veins and the fingers.

However, what really got me was that it seemed... _better._

The biggest immediate change was the lack of hair; the criss-crossing, sweeping black follicles that were usually so obvious against my skin had vanished. The birth-mark on the back of my right hand was gone, as was the small scar across the knuckle of my pinky finger. The tiny sun-spots, all the little bumps and ridges, even the scabs from scratching my outer arm too much; they were all gone, too.

I ran my left hand along the limb's length and found that it was almost perfectly smooth; it was warm, and I could feel the touch, but to my left hand my right felt almost like touching stone wrapped in a hot water bottle; it was warm, there was give, but it was obvious that there was a solidity at the core which couldn't be denied.

It was unmistakably my arm – but at the same time, it was like someone had chosen to try and create an artistic representation of my arm, then gone overboard with the aesthetic improvements.

I flexed the limb, and the swell of my bicep was almost like someone had emptied their lungs into a balloon beneath my skin.

That cinched it. I tried to keep in shape, but I'd never had a result like _that_ before.

Someone had been playing silly buggers with my body, and I had no idea just what they'd done.

Now with more of an imperative to get up and moving than ever, I sat up and leaned forward, repeating the same strategy for my ankle-bindings that I'd used on my left wrist.

With my ankles free, I immediately got off the bed, looking back at it.

The mattress had a Drew-shaped indentation a couple of inches deep; there were four rather obvious chunks missing from the frame, other parts of which had bent and twisted as I tore myself free; and there was still a glowing band of that written-light over where my neck had been.

 _'No way to fix any of that.'_ I shook my head, sighing.

There'd be no 'Did he vanish into thin air?' or 'Was there ever anyone here?' thoughts among my captors; no, it was going to be incredibly obvious that I'd escaped, and there was pretty much nothing I could do about that.

So I looked around the room instead, searching for a way out.

I spotted one a good ways along the hall (it was more of a hall than a room, I could see now – it might not have been all that wide, but it was _long_ ), and set off at a brisk pace, hearing a crystalline ringing as my ankle-bindings dragged across the floor.

I examined the double-doors I had spotted more closely once I reached them. They were wooden, with brass handles, and looked entirely out of place as a portal to a medical facility.

They were engraved, too; intricate, curving designs that reminded...me...of...

I brought my right arm up, dangling the binding stuck on my wrist in front of my eyes so I could compare its script to the door.

Not a perfect match, but they were more than similar enough.

"So they put some kind of spell on the door." I muttered to myself, frowning as I lowered my arm. "Makes sense, I guess…"

But how was I going to get past it? Touching it would just be asking for trouble, and even if I was apparently stronger than I used to be now, I wasn't certain of my ability to break down the doorframe around them - besides, there might be wires or something in there, which would make my decision to stick my unprotected arm in there a rather stupid one.

I tapped my chin, glancing around to see if inspiration would strike…

And my eyes fell on one of the beds.

I considered. ' _On the one hand, it's really obvious, it'll be loud, and I'm not even sure if it'll work properly. On the other hand, my other options are staying here and trying to ambush whoever comes through the door or breaking through the wall by hand, since laying hands on the enchanted door is just plain foolish.'_

Well, I'd already died once - what harm would it be to take a little risk now?

So, I walked over to the bed, crouched down beside it, firmed my grip on the underside of the frame, and lifted.

It came up easily; I got the piece of furniture to eye-level with no real struggle at all, even though I was having to grip it tightly enough to stop it rotating around the part of the frame I was holding it by.

I revised my estimate of how strong I was now, pacing over to the door and swinging my arms back and forth a couple of times, getting a feel for the bed's weight.

Which, to my arms, apparently wasn't much - but it was still there, and I could still use it.

So, I swung the whole bed back until it was almost vertical, then brought it forwards with as much of my strength behind it as I could manage.

The resulting cacophonous _smash_ of metal on wood, accompanied by a sound rather like a mirror breaking which came with a flash of golden light, was echoed an instant later by the bed-frame leaving my hands in a burst of movement as it was flung into the hall's opposite wall, where it embedded itself in the material and didn't fall.

' _I guess it had some kind of force-reflection on it, then.'_ I considered, eyeing the shattered doors where they barely hung on their hinges. ' _Well, I've already tripped any alarms they might've had, so no point hanging back any longer.'_

I moved up to the left-hand door, clenched a fist, then punched at the frame - remembering the trick to hitting something full-force was to swing for what was behind it, instead.

As such, I envisioned punching into the open air in the room or corridor beyond the frame, and in doing so I overrode my natural inclination to hold back on a punch to a solid object.

The chunk of wooden frame I had aimed at exploded outwards and splintered, taking the hinge with it and leaving the door to collapse over onto the floor beyond the hospital ward. I took the new opening to walk through the doorway, carefully not stepping on the door itself in case there was still some active spell on it, rubbing my fist.

' _Not even a bruise; barely even a twinge.'_ I noted. ' _No splinters, no cuts, no blood. Just what the hell did these people do to me?'_

I emerged into a corridor even longer than the room I had just exited; it was dark, despite being lit with torches every few paces and by the large windows set into the wall opposite me, which were multi-foot, arched constructions of thick glass with wooden struts inside them.

' _It's like I'm in a castle or something.'_ I noted, stepping forward to a window after checking both ways down the corridor in case someone was coming. ' _But where I am_ is _the questi...on…'_

My thoughts trailed off as I stared out the window, then swallowed heavily. "Oh. _Bugger."_

The world outside the window was barely lit; there was a kind of malignant purple-ish glow from the inky black sky, which bore not a single star, but it didn't seem to do much to brighten the ground, which seemed to be mostly bare rock with coatings of ash or something similar.

Clouds that looked like they were _also_ ash floated above like boulders waiting to fall, casting shadows that made the ground below even darker.

There was no plant-life to be seen anywhere; not a single bird or other animal in sight.

Apart from the landscape, I could also see what must have been another part of the building I stood in; it was all dark brick, with the same large windows that just barely exhibited the glow of the torches within, and the part I could see looked rather like the wing of a mansion with several towers extending from its roof and continuing out of my sight.

"Just what the hell is this…?" I asked myself, a bit shakily if I'm honest. "Am I in Resident Evil or Castlevania or something?"

I clapped my hands to my cheeks, which gave much less of a sting than it used to but still managed to help me focus. "Alright - alright. First things first, people are going to be coming to check on me, what do I do?"

Stay, run, fight - those were my options.

If I fought, I'd be doing so with my new strength - but I had only ever been in one serious fight and it got me killed. I didn't have any weapons this time, and I was only dressed in a hospital gown. ' _Not the best option.'_

So, stay or run. If I ran, I'd be heading into what was quite possibly enemy territory with barely any clothes on my back and no knowledge; I wouldn't put any money on my being able to survive in the hellscape out the window and I had no idea if I'd be able to get any kind of supplies from around the building without running into someone and being forced to fight.

That left staying - and no sooner had I reached that thought than two figures rounded the corner at the other end of the corridor, then stopped and stared at me as I froze in place.

Both of them were in white coats, but the one on my left was rather obviously female, with long brown hair. The one on the right was taller, male, but wearing a hairnet and a surgical mask, along with long white gloves.

I couldn't make out many details - or, at least, I couldn't until I squinted a bit, at which point they sudden jumped into sharp relief...and I felt a shiver run down my spine.

Both of them had eyes that were, with only slight variation, the same colour as Malachi's had been.

"Oh? He's already up and about." The male one noted.

"But...but that should be impossible!" The female proclaimed. "I used the same Restraint Script that we used during the Great War - there should have been no way for him to leave his bed!"

"Well, one way or another Coretha he rather clearly has." The man commented, his eyes locked onto mine from across the distance separating us.

' _He can make out my eyes as easily as I can see his; so, he has the same odd senses.'_

If he had the senses, he also probably had the strength - that, and whatever weapons or other abilities their group or species possessed.

I gritted my teeth; fighting was definitely out of the question now, and running seemed like it would be a futile effort.

So instead, I stepped forward, keeping my head held high and my eyes locked with the male's gaze.

The man stepped forward too, apparently surprising his female compatriot as she had to take several quick steps to catch up, and we stopped when we were only a couple of feet apart.

The man was taller than me; not by a great deal, but still definitely taller. When he reached up and idly removed the surgical mask, which he tossed aside, he revealed a goatee'd face belonging to someone in their twenties to thirties.

I tried to think of something to say - something that would make the right first impression, that would make it clear I wasn't going to be a pushover (I hoped) and that I would like some answers to my situation.

I took a deep breath...and opened my mouth.

"So, what's up, Doc?"

* * *

Azazel raised an eyebrow above his surgical mask as he rounded the corner, finding the being whose presence he had been observing from a distance ever since Coretha informed him of their arrival standing outside the ruined remains of the infirmary doors, having just turned away from the window by the looks of things.

The tan skin was odd for any Fallen; even though it showed the trademark flawlessness that came as part-and-parcel of any Angel's existence, there wasn't any of the usual marble-paleness that seemed to shine in the dark.

Likewise, the lavender eyes of a Fallen were darker than normal on this one - almost at the tipping point into a particularly dark blue.

Apart from that, the build, magical presence and shoulder-length, wavy black hair were all about right for one of the Fallen…

Azazel noted that the wrist and ankle bindings Coretha placed were still around the being's limbs, so it hadn't broken them directly - which wasn't surprising, considering Azazel himself had designed that Script to be unbreakable by anyone with a power level beneath the Fourth Level.

Instead, it had somehow thought its way around the bindings and to freedom.

Azazel found himself rather amused at that, and his curiosity went up a notch.

He met the being's eyes the moment it looked up - and it took a moment, but he could see the slight narrowing of its eyes before they took on an inner glow, indicating the being was focussing its vision.

So, it _did_ have access to at least one Fallen ability; _that_ was interesting.

Even more interesting was when the being began walking forward, meeting and holding Azazel's gaze as it walked with a certain pride, despite wearing nothing more than a hospital gown.

Amused and curious, the Fallen Governor did likewise, coming to a stop barely two feet from the being as it looked up into his eyes.

Idly he wondered what it would say. Would it make a demand or a request? Would it plead or rage? Perhaps it was simply curious?

"So, what's up, Doc?"

Azazel blinked.

He...hadn't been expecting _that._

"Not much." He replied, shrugging. "But my employee here found something interesting in the building today, so I thought I would come and take a look."

"Well, you've looked now." The being responded. "I've done some looking too - but what I've seen doesn't make much sense."

"Was that a question?" Azazel wondered aloud, and the being shrugged.

"It could be."

Azazel hummed, eyeing the being for a moment, before grinning. "Alright then - how about this? A question for a question; you can go first."

The being gave him a vaguely suspicious look, but nodded slowly. "Alright then…" It muttered, before glancing out a window. "Where are we?"

"The Underworld." Azazel informed it, cheerfully. "The Headquarters of the Grigori, to be exact."

He watched the being stand stock-still upon hearing the answer, the way its eyes lost focus indicating a great deal of thought occurring, before a laugh seemed to force its way from the being's throat. "Of course…" It gasped. "Of course, I'd end up in Hell...no good deed goes unpunished and all that…"

"My question next then." Azazel smiled, getting a nod from the being - who had stopped laughing, and was instead looking somewhat resigned. "Who are you?"

"Drew Campbell." Came the reply, before the being's mouth took on a sardonic twist. "A dead man walking."

Azazel noted the muttered continuation as Drew turned to look at him again. "What are you?" He asked. "'Cause I'm fairly sure Succubi are meant to be Greek," he gestured to Coretha, "and I always imagined that the Devil would look something like a mix of Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch."

Azazel blinked again, noting that Coretha did much the same thing beside him while mouthing the word 'Succubus…?' under her breath.

"Well, I'm not the Devil, though I do have him on speed dial." Azazel replied - and he wasn't even lying. "But I'm a Fallen Angel. And so's Coretha here."

Drew hummed. "Really? I always figured Fallen Angels would be eldritch abominations twisted and mutated by sin and corruption until they became utterly unholy monsters hell-bent on devouring souls."

It paused. "Or maybe I'm just basing all that on the Dresden Files, I don't know…"

"Well, I don't know what you imagined, but I know what I am, and that is a Fallen Angel." Azazel replied easily. "After all, if I wasn't a Fallen Angel, I wouldn't be able to do _this."_

There was a sound like an entire classroom's textbooks ripping themselves apart in seconds, before a group of mystically-black wings erupted from Azazel's back.

Twelve wings, in total - the mark of an Archangel, as Azazel himself once was. He remained the only Sixth Level Fallen in the Grigori; even Baraqiel and Shemhazai, while powerful, only bore ten wings apiece.

And the gap between a Sixth Level Fallen and a Fifth Level Fallen was as insurmountable as the peaks of Mount Olympus.

Beside Azazel, Coretha's own wings appeared; not so black as his own, more like the feathers of a crow or raven, but still the three pairs were unmistakably supernatural.

Drew watched with wide eyes as the new limbs appeared - then suddenly bent over, grabbing the fabric over its chest with a gasp.

A second later, a pair of black wings streaked with grey feathers erupted from his back, brushing against the ceiling with their tips and spanning from one side of the corridor to the other.

That still put them at a lesser length than Azazel or Coretha's - but that didn't seem so important to the man who was staring up at his new limbs in what appeared to be a chaotic blend of resignation, terror and amazement.

"And now, it seems, so are _you."_

Royal-purple eyes met Azazel's own lavender, which seemed to glow faintly in the not-light filtering through the twelve massive wings stretching from the Fallen Governor's back, and the newest Fallen Angel paused for a moment before letting out a long sigh.

"Fuck it; I was already going to hell."

* * *

And thus did my new life as an unholy affront to all that is pure and good in the world begin - because when it rains arterial spray, it pours bullshit.

Or something like that, anyway.

* * *

 **(PSIness11): I'll just get this out of the way, he brought this idea to me and I then proceeded to force him to write it.**

 **Honestly, I did kinda want the excuse to write it - but at the same time I only really wanted to write a plot bunny, whereas under Ness** _ **this**_ **happened.**

 **(PSIness11): Teninshigen - "This is sort of a plot bunny that I've been thinking about." Ness: "It's a story now mother fucker."**

 **Yeah, that's…that's just about right.**

 **Anyway, this chapter and the two I have in reserve are the only 'solidly planned' portions of this story - there are ideas about where it could go from there, which would likely involve quite a few OCs and a general exploration of the DxD world beyond just Kuoh and the Underworld. You'll note now and in the future that I probably seem to buff Fallen Angels quite a bit, among other differences from the canon universe - well there, you'll just have to excuse my artistic license, because I want the potential for interesting magic mechanics and fight scenes. And Hell, at least I'm not inventing some new Sacred Gear for my character (or, God forbid, a Longinus) or even giving him access to Devil magic (because trust me,** _ **that**_ **would be a recipe for disaster); and it's not like he's going to just stroll through the story like a bed of roses.**

 **The road to Hell is paved with SI/OCs and the river running alongside is all their salty tears.**

 **Of course, I don't always get what I want - so you can be the judge of whether or not I achieve my goals.**

 **(PSIness11): Speaking of OCs… I have been put on creation duty for this story. So you'll definitely see my own personal flair in this. I've taken it upon myself to give Teninshigen ideas and whole non-canon arcs to develop the story, so expect to see a lot of love and work put into this story. Kinda like Press-Ganging My Friend into this Bizarre World.**

 **Ah Press-Ganging - a whole lot of fun to write...even if it's apparently not so fun to read.**

 **Ah well; we wouldn't write this stuff if we didn't enjoy doing it. *shrug***

 **See y'all next time!**

 **(PSIness11): In about a day if my estimations are correct.**

 **.  
**


	2. Where There's a Will

"Alright - on your marks!"

I let out a low breath, closing my eyes for a moment as my fingertips dug a little into the asphalt-like substance of the track.

"Get set!"

I tensed, preparing my legs for the push-off and pulling my arms taut as I anticipated the launch.

"GO!"

There was a bright flash from the side of the starting area and I immediately set off, hurling myself forward with my arms and legs combined to kick-start my run before getting my feet under me and accelerating as hard as I could.

I crossed the couple of hundred meters between myself and the finish line in a blur of motion a short time later, whereupon I dug my heels in to try and bleed off speed and come to a stop.

What _actually_ happened, however, was that I tried to stop too abruptly, my front half kept going despite my bottom half's sudden loss of velocity, and the result was a faceplant that continued on for at least three feet with most of my body off the ground.

When I stopped moving, I groaned into the ground, embracing my oneness with the world beneath myself.

I was one with the asphalt; there was no point where it began and I ended, there was merely the singular existence of this patch of ground. It was incredibly peaceful; an almost zen-like state…

Which was then ruined irrevocably by raucous laughter.

"Oh, _man_ that was a good one!" Azazel gasped, clutching his mid-section with both arms as he bent over nearly double, creasing his stereotypical coach's outfit.

It was done in shades of maroon, purple and black, complete with a baseball cap despite the fact that we were indoors and the Fallen Angel territories in the Underworld didn't have a sun. He was holding a stopwatch in his left hand and a clipboard with attached pencil and sheets of paper in his left, although he wasn't actually using the latter - he was just putting the touches on his ensemble.

"It might not have been the longest skid yet," he continued, oblivious to how his voice was shattering my hopes of achieving nirvana, "but it had a certain _je ne sais quois_...maybe it was how you resembled a duck getting kicked in the middle of landing?"

The Fallen Governor stroked his goatee, putting on a faux-ponderous expression that wasn't going to fool anyone with the way his eyes were glittering. "I'll have to re-watch the video to check...maybe I'll ask some of the others for a second opinion?"

I grimaced, rising off the ground with a pushup motion and getting back to my feet, shaking my head to dislodge anything that might have been stuck to my face. "Yeah yeah, I get it." I muttered. "Clumsy old human with a Fallen body, let's all laugh at the new kid."

"Aw, no need to feel that way…" Azazel began, using the single-most condescending toddler-voice I'd ever heard. "It's not like the rest of us haven't been where you are or anything."

' _It kinda pisses me off that he'd just talk bullshit straight to my face.'_ I considered, knowing damn well that the Fallen had come into existence as Angels, formed by the hand of the Abrahamic God himself and already knowing every nuance of their own being.

Unlike me, who had all the strength, speed and magic of a First Level Fallen Angel, but none of the instincts or experience using them.

I gave the Fallen my best gimlet glare. "Fuck you, Azazel."

"Sorry, but I didn't get these wings sleeping with dudes." He riposted. "And anyway, we here at the Grigori frown on interpersonal relationships. They're unprofessional."

I shook my head. "I have no idea how you can say that with a straight face."

"Practice." Was his response, then he took on a somewhat more serious tone and expression. "Look, Drew, it's only been a couple of days. You'll get the hang of the basics soon enough."

"'Soon enough' is too damn vague when I still can't go an hour without breaking something." I sighed, and Azazel shrugged.

"That might be the case, but it's all you've got, so suck it up." He told me, before waving back to the starting line. "Now c'mon, we'll try it again - if it's any consolation, your speed's a bit above average for a First Level Fallen."

"I'm a tiny bit faster than the closest thing the Abrahamic Factions have to a trash mob. _Joy."_ I drawled, pacing back towards the white line which had been painted across the asphalt.

"Those are my people, y'know." Azazel commented.

I nodded. "And my opinion of their place in the pecking order doesn't need to be repeated."

"Indeed not." Azazel snorted. "I think my ears are still ringing from that little rant."

"You're a Sixth Level Fallen, the leader of the Grigori and the pioneer researcher into Sacred Gears." I called over my shoulder. "Suck it up."

The Fallen Governor clicked his teeth. "Man, you kids these days have no respect, do you?"

"I have plenty of respect." I answered, getting into my starting crouch once more. My feet settled into the dents made when I pushed off the asphalt, and my fingers slid into the grooves my previous launches had scored into the same surface. "I just don't go tossing it around willy-nilly."

"Eh, I guess I'm not one to be lecturing about that, what with being Fallen and everything." Azazel shrugged, before raising his conjured stopwatch again. "Alright then - on your marks!"

* * *

It had been the better part of a week since I woke up in the Grigori Medical Care Ward.

After I ran into them in the corridor, Azazel and Coretha had half-dragged me back into the room I'd just exited, Azazel had fixed the door (enchantments and all) with a lazy wave of his hand and Coretha had sat me on a bed to start running basic tests.

Reflexes, sight and hearing were all familiar tests to me - but I'd had to be talked through each step of the magical power test, and Azazel had been watching me with a somewhat unsettling kind of hunger in his gaze during the process.

When the basic medical tests were over, Azazel had dismissed Coretha, then started in on questioning.

That ended up taking a few hours - questions about who I had been and where I was from, how intact my memory was, differences in sensation, what I'd been doing before I appeared, my interactions with Malachi, the circumstances of our mutual deaths…

It was a bit like pulling out teeth to recall those moments, both difficult and painful, but the moment I recognised who I was sitting in front of I grit my teeth and bore it.

I had a working knowledge of Highschool DxD. I knew it well enough to match the character of Azazel to the human-shaped force of creation I was sitting with once he introduced himself and took the hairnet off, and I was willing to put up with a bit of personal discomfort in exchange for him not deciding I was better dead than alive and reducing me to my constituent atoms.

Admittedly, I didn't think the peace-advocate would actually do that - but he had enough power in one finger to 'accidentally' me out of existence without really thinking about it, and the rampant paranoia that appeared to have started growing following my death told me not to take the chance.

In between his questions, I got to ask a few of my own. The first was, rather obviously, just how I had managed to live through bleeding out and simultaneously suffocating.

The answer I received began with the explanation that Malachi had been a Fallen Angel who was banished from the Grigori - and, indeed, from its reality entirely - for trying to raise a ruckus among the other Fallen and lead them into murdering humans.

Azazel's standard punishment for a first-time offence of that type was apparently to utilise a 'Script' (which was the name given to works of magic written in Seraphic, the inherently magical divine language of the Angels - the written-light that had held me to the bed being a good example) he had developed to both seal away a Fallen's magic and, in the case of their performing a truly selfless act, feeling true remorse or dying, return them or their body to their home dimension.

It was meant to be a punishment which would lead to a Fallen developing compassion or a sense of empathy. As a credit to its inception, in some instances, it had done just that.

But the Reclamation Script, as it was known, had brought quite a lot of bodies home in its history. Or, so I inferred from the weariness in Azazel's eyes as he explained it.

I felt a certain pang of sympathy for the Fallen Governor. He had given those Fallen a chance, but they had apparently been unable to bear the idea of changing their ways before they got themselves killed.

That'd be enough to make even an immortal feel old.

But going back to my survival, it seemed that as the Reclamation Script had activated on Malachi's death, an error of sorts had occurred.

It had been triggered by Malachi's death. But, upon encountering my nearly-dead-self, the remorse I had been feeling (and possibly my choice to try and save that woman acting as selfless) had seemingly caused it to include me in the transport. It was a one-in-a-million chance - but what came next was too small a chance to have a quantifiable numerical value.

As the Reclamation Script transported us back through the Dimensional Gap to the Grigori Headquarters, the corrosive, reality-warping properties of that dimension had gone to work. Since Malachi and I had already been subsumed into the magic of the Script, effectively meaning we had were both occupying the same space both physically and magically, those properties had done something utterly impossible.

Human and Fallen Angel had...well, _melted_ into one another, leaving the strongest traits to survive. The magic and body of a Fallen, which would have been able to traverse the Dimensional Gap with ease so long as the Script had contained _only_ a Fallen; and the mind and soul of a human - since Malachi was already dead and gone, leaving mine the only consciousness present for the amalgamation to draw on.

There simply weren't numbers for how small the chance of what had happened occurring _was_...but it had still happened, and I had to deal with it.

I wasn't really complaining about still being alive - but there _were_ some issues with my 'reincarnation'.

Like my constant faceplants, the swathe of wrecked doors and small objects I left in my wake, the frustration of having to re-learn a lot of basic motor skills…and, of course, Azazel himself - utterly irreverent troll of a bastard that he was.

Still, he'd been dedicating the time to get me started on regaining my ability to perform basic tasks, and I owed him for that. For not immediately blasting me, but instead giving me a room in the headquarters and letting me live among the Grigori. I'd already resigned myself to figuring out some way of paying him back; I'd regret it far too much if I didn't.

But as for the _rest_ of the Fallen Angels…

Well.

Individuals like Malachi and Kokabiel were... _technically_ a minority.

But that didn't make me feel any less like a mouse in a building full of lions.

* * *

I exited the running track room with a sigh, feeling my aches from the long day.

My face was, thankfully, too durable to be really hurt by my faceplants. I'd been practicing the fine art of coming to a halt for several hours however, and Fallen Angels still had to deal with fatigue.

Well. Fatigue of a sort, anyway.

The thing about Fallen Angels is that they don't actually need to eat, sleep, drink or even breathe, being as they are purely magical beings who were made by the hand of the Abrahamic God. When they were first made, they weren't even humanoid; they were merely formless magic that could follow orders, barely even distinct from God.

They didn't have personalities or names. They were simply existences with no purpose other than to serve God.

But, after God created humans in the Garden of Eden and told the Angels to watch over them, that began to change.

Over the thousands of intervening years between then and the present, Angels had become easily mistaken for humans. They took on human forms, gendered themselves, developed personalities and even gained names.

But, they were still magical beings - they didn't need anything more than magic to exist, and just by existing they generated magic.

In other words, they were truly immortal beings; the only way for them to die was for them to be killed.

And now, I was the same.

I could simulate human processes if I wanted to. As a purely magical being, my form was dictated entirely by my will (or, until I actually learned to control my own form, my subconscious image of myself), meaning I could conceivably cause my form to mimic a human's in every way beyond just the aesthetic.

Because that's all my body was now - aesthetically human.

I breathed in and out, but the air was the same since my 'lungs' were just a way of drawing air in and expelling it. I had a 'heartbeat' and 'pulse', but those were just parts of my body that went up and down at certain times - I had no actual circulatory system. I acted like a human in every way, but it was all superficial. Just...habit.

'Habit'. An odd way to reference my humanity...but for all intents and purposes, that was what it had become. I had an eternity spreading out before me, and it was generally believed that I would at some point take off my 'habit' like an old coat and hang it up to never be worn again.

And that both terrified me and pissed me off in equal measure.

Still, as I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated, causing the pain I felt to disappear like it had never been there, I couldn't deny a simple truth.

I wasn't wholly human anymore. I was a being that had never really existed before, a true Immortal with the mind and soul of a human.

And the moment that got out, I was going to be hunted to my death or capture.

The Devils would want me dead for my 'heritage' or in their Peerages for my potent Light element and the prestige it could give them in the Rating Games. Half the Grigori (or a bit less, at least) wanted me dead - again for my 'heritage', but the other side this time. According to the laws of Heaven, I was an abomination that should be put to the flame and sword so I could be removed from God's creation.

And _that_ was _just_ the Abrahamic Factions. Just about any other mythological faction on the face of the planet would be just as likely to gut me for being either Human or Fallen as try to sell me to whichever one of the Abrahamic Factions they were most closely aligned with.

Quite literally the only person who was even vaguely on my side right now was Azazel - and I was convinced that his interest in me was largely because of my unique nature and status as _technically_ a member of his faction.

And my nature _was_ unique. There had been quite a few half-Fallen, half-Human children; Akeno Himejima was a good example of that. But they were human first, and Fallen second. Mortals with some of the Fallen's abilities.

I was the reverse - the only one of my kind.

And that was what put me in danger.

"Well, well, well," came a sneering voice, "if it isn't the trash trying to pretend it's people."

...Though, 'danger' could be a fairly relative term.

I sighed, glancing sideways to a figure that had become quite familiar in recent days. "Hello, Mittelt; you need help finding your barbie or something?"

The Fallen Angel Mittelt had the appearance of a young girl, with her three-and-three-quarter foot frame and twintail hairstyle. Said hair was a flaxen blonde to go with her crystal blue eyes, styled using a black bow with white ruffles that fit with her 'gothic lolita' dress theme. She looked rather like a child playing dress-up - but in reality, she was at least three-thousand years old and a sadistic, cynical bitch who enjoyed messing with people.

And despite what she liked to say, I was apparently 'people' enough.

"Fuck you, trashbag!" She spat back.

"I ascribe firmly to the belief that you shouldn't stick your dick in crazy." I replied with my best deadpan. "Besides, you're not exactly attractive, y'know."

"Hah!" She scoffed. "I suppose you'd think so; how _is_ your quest to get into Lord Azazel's pants going, anyway?"

"About as well as your attempt to get a rise of _any_ kind out of me." I told her, walking down the corridor away from the Fallen.

Unfortunately, she followed - apparently she wasn't willing to let things lie for the day yet. "So you're not denying there's a quest then?"

I glanced over my shoulder at her. "Well if I keep having to see you every day, I wouldn't be surprised if I somehow flipped sexualities before I can get out of here."

I could hear her grinding her teeth as we kept walking, and I timed the sideways tilt of my head just well enough to avoid losing anything more than a couple of hairs to the light spear which shot through the space where my head used to be.

"Man, your throw's almost as lousy as your material." I noted, ignoring the _crack_ sound as the magical weapon buried itself a foot into the wall at the end of the corridor. "You should probably go back to the Fallen Kindergarten; maybe they'll even wash your mouth out with enough soap to make your presence bearable."

I had to sidestep the next light spear, spin away from the third, and as the fourth came in I raised my right hand in front of me and focussed.

Fallen Angels, as I now technically am, are purely magical beings. I've stated that already. What this means is that using magic comes as naturally to them - _more_ naturally - than breathing comes to a human.

A few years ago, if I'd been put in this situation, I might have taken ages learning how to unlock that same kind of mastery. But since I'd gone to University, I had learned a type of meditation that worked wonders for self-evaluation.

Namely, Descartes' Meditations.

I borrowed a copy of The Meditations from Azazel, whose library sneered at its younger Alexandrian relative (and, thinking about it, probably contained more than a few texts from that building. It was Azazel's library, after all), then simply sat down in the small room I had been given on Azazel's order and lost myself in the process.

I may not have agreed with all Descartes' ideas, but his Meditations were very useful in my situation.

By the time I emerged, I was able to will away that day's aches and pains with the simple reminder that I didn't actually have muscles or nerves any more. After all, without those, why should I be feeling pain?

And with two extra days of practice under my belt, I was more than capable of forming a curving pane of golden light in front of me that deflected Mittelt's pink spear. Its tip was a fairly standard spear-head, but it fed back into a pair of backward-swept curves like wings, which in turn sprouted from a flat-headed arrow shape that grew from the main shaft.

The colour of magic among the Fallen, as well as the designs of their light spears, was largely a personal choice. A lot of the older, more powerful Fallen preferred to stick with the basic golden-yellow colouration as a reminder of their days in Heaven or for other reasons. But colours ranging across the entire spectrum between black and white could be found among the Grigori.

Mittelt chose a reddish-pink, while I myself chose not to tint my magic any particular colour. Or, not yet, anyway - maybe my mind would change in time.

Either way, my shield rang like a crystal bell when the spear rebounded from it, the weapon shattering into its constituent light as it hit the ground, and Mittelt spat on the ground beside her. "So you conned Lord Azazel into teaching you how to use those powers you stole, huh?"

"Hardly." I shook my head. "This stuff's really easy; though that's rather obvious, since even _you_ can do it."

Another light spear appeared in Mittelt's right hand, and I took a moment to focus on the light still emanating from my raised hand and reshape it.

The shield swirled like a vortex, funnelling down into the palm of my hand as a sphere before it grew vertically, forming a long shaft. I didn't make spears - or rather, I was yet to do so. Instead, I stuck with a simple staff design, something equally useful for swatting things out of the air and getting some reach on a swing.

Plus, I had some ideas already rooted which I probably _would_ need help from Azazel to implement - or at least, I'd need some of his books.

A twirl of the staff in my hand intercepted Mittelt's latest projectile and knocked it from the air, the staff in my hand lighter and more a part of me than any other weapon could be.

I might not have been a skilled fighter, but with the abilities of a Fallen Angel, I didn't necessarily _have_ to be; superpowers could make up a pretty big gap in skill, after all. That was how I could take Mittelt's first strike on my staff as she swiped at me with a new spear, the weapons colliding with a noise of glass-on-glass.

"Don't act like you know what you're fucking talking about!" Mittelt hissed at me, our weapons locked together; she'd have looked ridiculous with her tiny form, if not for the genuine anger in her eyes. "You're just a human who got lucky and stole Malachi's Light; where do you get off acting like you're so much better than us?!"

The spear came around for another swipe and I interposed my staff, taking the hit with braced legs and arms. "Oh, I don't think I'm better than you." I told her, before pushing our combined weapons forward and hooking my right foot behind her left ankle, then pulling.

Her much lighter form went over backwards as I levered my staff sideways, flipping her spear away.

Mittelt backflipped to her feet, seemingly uncaring of the fact that she was wearing a skirt and I was standing right in front of her. Then again, I didn't really care either. I wasn't kidding about her child-like stature effectively killing any physical attraction I might've felt towards her (and her personality having killed any _other_ kind of attraction or affection).

And thus, when she was facing me once again, she found herself doing it along the length of my staff, the tip of which was only inches from her nose. In other words, directly within the reach of any spearhead I might choose to add to my weapon.

"I don't know you, Mittelt." I told her bluntly. "I don't know your history, whether you have friends, what your likes and dislikes are or _anything_ besides the fact that you're a bitch of a First Level Fallen with an axe to grind.

"So no - I don't know anything about you, so I don't think I'm better than you."

I retracted my staff, placing its butt on the ground and leaning on the solid-light construct, my eyes still fixed on the other Fallen. "But Malachi? The Fallen who was exiled from the Grigori to learn compassion, but who killed me when I interrupted his attempt to rape and then likely murder a woman in a back-alley?"

I pushed off the ground with my staff, using the momentum to turn away and get me up to walking momentum as I headed down the corridor, then dispersing the weapon as I went. "If there ever comes a time when I'm not better than him, I'll storm Heaven myself and _ask_ them to put me out of my misery."

And with those parting words, I turned the corner at the corridor's end…

And let the shivers break out. ' _Holy_ fucking _shit, I just came within an inch of dying_ again.' I thought to myself, tightening a fist and taking deep breaths to try and calm down. ' _If magic sensing wasn't a basic supernatural ability in this universe, that first spear would have killed me.'_

I'd gotten incredibly lucky there. Apparently, even a First Level Fallen or a Low-Class Devil was capable of sensing when magic was used. It was a skill like any other, with some talented practitioners who got a head-start but which could always be honed with practice. As such, I had a functioning version myself, despite being only a few days old in Fallen terms.

But if it weren't for that and my new Fallen 'physiology', Mittelt would have splattered my brains all over the corridor back there.

' _I need to get better.'_ I considered as I walked on, focussing on putting one foot in front of another to distract myself. ' _If a character whose sole purpose in the series was to die a horrible death in the early episodes can come that close to killing me, I can't afford_ not _to get better.'_

There was a storm coming; Issei Hyoudou and his damn breast obsession were going to start turning the world on its head at some point in the quite possibly near future, and I didn't trust in my own ability to stay out of the fight when there was going to be so much damn upheaval.

My survival was going to hinge on my being strong enough to deal with the shitstorm reality was going to become in rather short order. So, I needed to make use of the one advantage I really had.

Human ingenuity - or, the ability to bullshit my way through life.

And I could start by exploiting the hell out of the magic I had been given. Because after all - if I could already make a spear and a shield…

Who was to say I couldn't make other things, too?

* * *

Azazel wandered along a corridor in the Grigori headquarters, once more shirking his paperwork duties as he went to track down his newest project.

Drew was an interesting addition to the Grigori. Indeed, he was an interesting addition to the world itself. An extra-dimensional human whose soul remained sacrosanct despite his becoming a Fallen Angel in almost every other way...in the past, Azazel wouldn't have hesitated to open him up on an operating table and see what made him tick.

Those days, however, were long gone. Now, he was content to observe what the hybrid got up to, making various notes to himself and idly wondering if maybe he could present Drew to Michael and Sirzechs as concrete evidence of the Grigori's ability to function benevolently towards and alongside humans.

Of course, to do _that_ he'd have to reach a point where Fallen like Mittelt wouldn't try to assassinate the boy mere rooms away from Azazel himself.

The Fallen Governor had been observing the two from behind an illusion of his own weaving as they fought, keeping a close eye on both. Knowing Mittelt as he did, he understood why she would hound Drew in such a fashion - but it was the young man's response he hadn't been sure of and had wanted to observe.

It had been...enlightening.

Drew held himself to a standard, that was clear to see. He had morals that he wanted to uphold - but at least since his death, his ethics seemed a bit less rigid than Azazel might have expected them to be.

He had no hesitation in a fight. There was no pause to consider before he acted against Mittelt, maneuvering her into a position where he could well have killed her. Azazel's best guess was that whatever part of himself Drew had pulled out when he killed Malachi in self-defense, it hadn't gone back into its box yet - and quite possibly never would.

Maybe the hybrid would come down from his hair-trigger at some point...but the Fallen Governor resided over an entire race of beings that had, in many cases, been hand-made for war and combat. He knew a thing or two about killers.

The first time was the hardest, and every time after grew easier. It was a slippery slope in many cases, but in Drew at the very least that first time had been enough to shake him loose. Being willing to strike first and disregard moral consideration or someone's appearance - that was an attitude many would see as reprehensible. But to Azazel, it was the exact kind of attitude that Drew would need to survive in their world.

He knew the way the world worked far better than almost anyone else, and he gave Drew enough credit to consider him intelligent enough to have reached the same conclusion as Azazel himself. Once the world knew about him, he'd be an object of curiosity, hate and avarice. He would be something people wanted dead or under their thumb in one way or another.

That was why he had made sure to leave the hybrid with easy instructions for how to reach one of the space-expanded multi-purpose training areas near his room. A room that Drew was making use at that very moment, and which Azazel was wandering along to visit.

He reached the door, the label along the top written in Aramaic, which was the preferred written language for the Abrahamic Factions. Seraphic was an extremely magical language due to it being of divine origin, and the art of writing it _without_ causing magical effects either random or pre-determined was one that only Azazel himself could be said to have mastered.

It had made a decent hobby for a couple of centuries, with plenty of entertaining explosions and random effects that took up an entire shelf of journals in his library, opening new avenues to research in his spare time.

Shaking off the thoughts, the Fallen Governor debated entering the door like a normal person - then dropped the thought at 'normal person' and kicked the portal open with a wave. "Yo-!"

He then promptly ducked, something small and very, very fast blowing a hole in his golden bangs as they failed to descend at the same rate as the rest of his body.

Azazel stood up from his crouch, turning to look at the hole in the wall behind where he was standing, before returning his gaze to where Drew was standing in a firing stance with what looked to the Fallen's eyes like a Light-element construct of a Webley Mk. VI revolver. One which was now aimed at the floor, but which had moments ago been aimed at the Fallen Governor's head.

"Man, that's an itchy trigger finger." Azazel noted with a whistle. "If it wasn't me coming through that door you might've killed someone, you know?"

Drew nodded with a grimace, eyeing the weapon in his hands for a moment. "Yeah…" He glanced back up. "Sorry, Azazel; I guess I'm...a bit jumpy, at the moment."

"That'd be because of the thing with Mittelt, right?" The Governor asked, getting a sharp look from the hybrid. "Oh c'mon, you _don't_ expect me to hear about one of my subordinates getting into a fight with my newest pet project?"

"I'm not sure what I find more disturbing in that description - the 'pet' or the 'project'." Drew riposted.

Oh, if he only knew what had become of Azazel's 'projects' in darker times, he certainly wouldn't have been saying that. "Oh relax," Azazel waved him off, "I prefer my pets pretty and with big-"

"I GET IT!" Drew cut him off emphatically, swiping a hand sideways - the one _not_ currently holding the revolver construct. "I don't need to be hearing about your habits."

The Fallen Governor blew out a dramatic breath. "It's a sad day when society has produced such a repressed young man…" He sighed. "To think, a whole glorious world of bountiful women and he chooses to abstain from all the pleasures on offer…"

"What can I say, I like to play hard to get." Drew deadpanned, before sighing. "So, did you want something, Azazel?"

"Well, Shem was getting on at me to do my paperwork again, so I figured I'd come and see what you were up to." The Governor admitted shamelessly, drawing a twitch from Drew's eye.

"One day, that man is going to snap and beat the hell out of you. I kinda hope I'll be there to see it."

"Nah, Shem likes me way too much for that." Azazel denied, neither of them mentioning the fact that any serious fight between the two Fallen could only ever have one outcome.

Azazel had many contemporaries and peers among the various factions of the Moonlit World, as he'd once heard the supernatural side of reality referred to - but Shemhazai, while a good friend and a trusted confidant, wasn't one of them.

A Sixth Level Fallen existed on almost a completely different plane than a Fifth Level Fallen. That was simply the way reality worked, how it had always worked, how it would always work. A universal constant set down by the Creator himself.

"But anyway," he continued, "I see you've been playing around with your Light element."

"Yeah." Drew admitted, looking at the weapon hanging from his right hand once again. "Earlier...Mittelt almost killed me. One thrown spear and, if I hadn't been able to feel it coming, I'd have been dead. Again."

Azazel grew slightly more somber as he considered the young man before him, whose knuckles whitened as his grip tightened around the revolver's grip. "I don't really want to die again." Drew admitted softly. "I mean, I was kinda fuzzy when it happened that first time, but it was still pretty bad. And if it happens again…"

The revolver's barrel was shaking now, and Azazel thought he could hear the young man's teeth grinding together even from where he was standing.

"I don't want to waste this second chance." Drew declared, looking up and meeting Azazel's eyes. "I think that I can go at least a lot of the way with this…" He continued, lifting up the revolver - which became little more than a suggestion of a glowing shape for a moment, before re-solidifying as a Desert Eagle, then a Colt Single Action, then a combat knife, then a frag grenade before the hybrid closed his hand into a fist, the light glowing from between his fingers for a moment before it died. "But will and imagination can only go so far in a world ruled by Dreams and the Infinite."

Royal purple eyes met Azazel's ancient lavender. "I owe you already." Drew told the Fallen Governor. "More than I think I could ever repay. But still...I have to ask."

The hybrid inclined his head until his chin was almost on his chest, looking to the floor. "Please help me get strong enough to survive."

Azazel considered the young man with his head bowed, looking through millennia of experience. Through the eyes of a being who had looked upon the face of God, who had walked the fields of the greatest war in the world's history and been seen as nothing less than a monster, who had delved into the deepest and darkest corners of the universe in a fanatical search for answers and further knowledge, who had single-handedly held the Fallen Angels together in the millennia since the end of the Great War.

And he smiled a little. "Alright kid - but you know this won't come cheap, right?"

"I know."

Azazel believed him. The kid already knew what his life was worth, after all.

"Then we'll start now." He declared, striding forward into the room. As he went, he gave into his mischievous streak and re-wove his conjured yukata into a purple-and-maroon haori over a dark-blue shirt and pants, while his shoes became geta sandals. He held out his hand and thin air deposited a lavender-and-white striped bucket hat into the appendage, which he promptly placed on his own head. Finally, he turned to face Drew, a golden cane of Light-element magic forming in his hand for him to lean on.

"You've already got the idea that the vast majority of Fallen never quite catch on to." He declared, enjoying the look of flabbergasted dread growing on Drew's face. "Light-element magic, our birthright, if you will, is primarily a power of creation; it translates well into conjuring solid objects, crafting illusions and forming the spears and other weapons that we use so often.

"That means that it can be used to form just about anything you can imagine."

Azazel sighed. "Sadly, a lot of my kinsmen are rather lacking in the imagination department; if they don't kill something immediately, they just think 'More spears!' or 'Bigger spears!' or 'More bigger spears!'" He made sure to put on a squeaky voice for the examples, before grinning at Drew. "But _you_ \- you're different.

"You've got a human soul; a human point of view; a human _imagination_." Azazel tapped the side of his own my head. "You've got just what you need to make the most of our magic; but right now, you don't have the power you need."

Azazel's wings appeared in a flurry of feathers, stretching up behind him like the abstract radiance of a black sun. "You've said it yourself before; a First Level Fallen is among the weakest creatures in our world." He said seriously. "That's where you're starting - that's what you have to work with.

"So what I'm going to do, is help you gain more of that power, until you truly can translate anything you can imagine into a weapon you can wield."

"That...sounds good." Drew said slowly, still transfixed by the back wings. "But... _how_ exactly?"

Azazel's grin spread across his entire face and took on a decidedly savage cast. "A soul grows most quickly when it's in danger of being destroyed." He recited, the cane he was resting his hand on reshaping itself into a medium-sized, almost rectangular blade with a razor-like angular point instead of a proper tip. "They actually got that part just about right."

Drew gulped...then abruptly spun around and brought his hand up, the Webley forming there and discharging in almost the same second. A condensed bullet of Light magic shot from the weapon's mouth with a _crack_ of displaced air, meeting the light spear coming the other way and sending it spinning off course.

"So for the next twenty-four hours," Azazel continued, levelling his sword at Drew, "I'm going to try to kill you. If you survive, then we'll take things to the next level. If you don't, well…"

He shrugged. "It's no skin off my nose."

Drew's pupils were somewhat dilated, and he was breathing in and out quickly - apparently he'd yet to drop those little placebos. "I know I'm going to regret this," he said, "but _fuck you, Azazel."_

"Your opinion has been noted and disregarded." The Fallen Governor told him cheerfully. "Now - _DODGE!"_

And that was about the time the room's ceiling was replaced with light spears.

As the rain of solid (but pointy) golden light began, Azazel grinned to himself beneath his rather stylish bucket hat (if he did think so himself). This was definitely more entertaining than doing all that paperwork...Vali had so little time to spend with his old man these days, it was good to get back into the old habit.

Ah, the faces his adoptive son would make when Azazel gave him his daily 'wake-up call'...

Good times.

* * *

 _Twenty-Four Hours Later…_

"Aaand that's time." Azazel noted, observing the stopwatch he'd conjured at the beginning of the training session before he idly returned it to magic. "Congratulations, you're still in one piece."

"It doesn't really feel like it." Drew commented from where he was lying on the floor of the room, staring blankly at the ceiling with the kind of thousand-yard stare which could only come with trauma.

"Oh, stop being such a wuss." Azazel scolded him. "The pain's all in your mind now, you can turn it off if you want to."

"I did." Drew replied, his voice somewhat distant. "Several hours ago. I'm fairly certain that I'm never quite going to get over the trauma from this training session. Not even if I live to be older than dirt like you."

"You're just jealous because I look better for my age than you do for yours." Azazel sniffed, tilting up the brim of his hat and looking around with a grin. "Still...old age and treachery might be more my thing, but you've certainly got the exuberance part down."

The Fallen Governor idly kicked an asphalt fragment by his foot, watching it skip off into the several-foot-deep maze of craters that were all that really remained of the room's floor.

The room would repair itself in time, but in the direct aftermath of their training, the concrete-equivalent walls, floor and ceiling were all covered in burn-marks, dents, craters, slashes and punctures of a dozen varieties. The craters themselves were almost universally covered in the puncture-marks of light spears, which sometimes deepened the craters by twice their original amount.

" _Yay."_ Drew deadpanned, before pushing himself to his feet with the use of his wings, which were currently deployed.

Azazel eyed them for a moment, taking in the almost inky-blue colouration that was dominant among the feathers but which gave way in places to bands of silver-grey. He'd never seen wings quite like them before, but assumed it was in some way an indicator of Drew's nature as a hybrid. Maybe he'd 'appropriate' a couple of feathers for study…

The somewhat battered-looking wings withdrew themselves into Drew's back, unimpeded by any clothing considering his shirt had given up the ghost some hours previously, and the hybrid let out a long groan as he stretched, eyes closed as he blew out a deep breath. "I feel like I need to sleep…"

"Well, you can try if you want." Azazel commented. "But I'm not sure what will happen. Fallen can usually reach a state of low thought activity for a few hours at a time which is close to sleep, but we don't dream and it doesn't serve any purpose for us." He shrugged. "Still, do what you want, no need to listen to the wisdom of millennia when it's freely offered."

"No need at all." Drew agreed, eyeing his bare arms and torso with a frown.

A second later, a golden glow suffused the bare skin before seeming to be extruded, solidifying into the shape of a long coat that rolled down to his knees.

Seemingly happy with the glowing but opaque item of clothing, Drew made his way carefully over the pockmarked terrain to the door, pausing as he had a hand on its handle. "Azazel...thank you for this."

The Fallen Governor gave a genuine smile, removing his hat as he did so. "It was fun, kid - let me know if you want to do something like this again, it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than my paperwork."

Drew snorted and shook his head, turning the doorknob and stepping out before closing the door behind him, leaving Azazel alone in the training room.

Azazel, still grinning, idly cast his eyes around before alighting on what he was looking for and making his own careful away across the floor.

Crouching down, he lifted the two feathers to eye-level; one an inky, shimmering colour that could have been a midnight blue or an abyssal black, the other an almost softly-glowing shade of silvery-grey.

"Shem can wait a little while longer…" Azazel murmured to himself, tucking the feathers into a pocket on the inside of his haori which hadn't existed until he needed it. "He'll understand."

Then, with a momentary flash of golden light, he vanished from the training room, leaving the devastated area to begin reforming itself.

* * *

I wandered along the corridors toward my room barely conscious of the world around me, caught up as I was in the whirlwind of my own thoughts.

Azazel hadn't been kidding about the twenty-four hours. I had felt every minute, probably every second, of that time, as I learned from every incoming attack and every dodge or counter I had surprised myself with producing.

Shaping the Light element had been fairly easy before - now, it came to me just as easily as turning my head or moving my fingers, and it had become just as second-nature to extend or retract my wings, which were much closer to a second set of arms with the way I could maneuver them.

They might not have had fingers (or at least, not without forming them from Light), but with the way they could grow so long as I focussed on them, and with the range of motion they had available, they could provide a shield or attack in almost any direction - behind me in particular.

Batfink didn't have shit on me.

The Light coat I had conjured shifted with quiet chimes around my shins as I walked, a somewhat calming noise that helped to slow my brain after it had been stuck on full-throttle reaction for so long.

I had developed more combat-related instincts in the past day than in the whole rest of my life, martial arts lessons included, combined. I felt more in control of myself, fully aware of my body and my magic. It was a feeling of confidence I hadn't experienced before, and I found myself enjoying it as I turned onto the corridor where my room was located.

It was the start of a new day, and things were going my way.

"Ah! Hello, Drew! What a coincidence seeing you here!"

My eyebrow twitched, and I sighed. ' _Of course_ she's _here.'_

Leaning on the window-side wall of the corridor with a smirk and a glint in her eye was someone who I wished I could avoid just as much, if not _more_ , than Mittelt.

Standing about a head shorter than me, with black hair down to her waist and true purple eyes, she had the kind of figure that made people want to sell their souls - and it was very easy to tell, since her clothing consisted of black, strap-like objects that almost resembled leather. They wrapped over and under her breasts and formed a thong-like piece held around her hips by three thin straps, gloves that ran right up her arms with small lengths of chains hanging from them, shoulder guard-like objects on her shoulders with three large spikes sprouting from her right shoulder and black thigh-high heel boots.

It was like an inversion of modesty, covering a lot of what would normally be shown and uncovering most of what would normally be hidden. A classic Fallen look, honestly - one that I'd have to admit was at least physically attractive...

But knowing the kind of rotten, putrid soul lay behind the appealing human veneer overshadowed the physical attractiveness like Batman looming over a common street thug.

"Raynare." I replied, striving to keep my tone civil but unsure if I really managed - or if I managed to keep my expression neutral.

"I see you've gone with a new look." She commented, blatantly eyeing me up and down with a grin that was frankly sultry. " _Very_ nice…"

My stomach twisted unpleasantly. "It's just until I can find a new shirt." I grumbled, fighting the urge to take my hands out of my pockets and close my coat against her eyes. "My last one's dust in the wind."

"Oh, I'm sure I can help you there." Raynare remarked, pushing off the wall and taking a step closer to me. "I'm really rather good at conjuring clothes; I make these myself, you know?"

She gestured to herself with a sweep of the arm, a gesture that would have been more than enough to distract Issei Hyoudou from the fact that he was dying, probably cause him to not summon Rias and get reincarnated, and therefore give the Khaos Brigade and all that came with them a much easier job.

I kept my eyes on hers. I'd almost been gutted the first time I broke eye-contact with a Fallen in an isolated place; the second time I almost got my head taken off. I liked to think I wasn't stupid enough to need a third lesson.

"I think our sizes would be rather different." I tried, which only seemed to widen Raynare's smirk.

"Well, I suppose I'd just have to... _measure_ you, then."

She licked her lips, and the small, gibbering voice in the back of my head telling me to deploy my wings and jump out the nearest window came a bit closer to the forefront of my mind.

"Thanks, but no thanks." I denied bluntly, not seeing any more civil or subtle way to break the way the conversation was moving. "I really need to learn how to do these things myself after all."

A displeased look flickered across Raynare's features, but she started smiling again quite quickly, taking another step forward. "Well then, how about I teach you?" She mused, now close enough to be looking more directly up at me, leaving me with a steeper angle to look down at in order to maintain eye contact.

That _also_ put certain other things more obviously in my field of view, which told me she was probably getting too close.

"I'll consider it." I told her. ' _When Hell freezes over.'_

I took a step back and to the side to give me a clear shot along the corridor. "Now if you'll excuse me, I just got out of a long training session and I could use some time to rest…"

I took a step forward, but came to a standstill when Raynare's right hand latched onto the elbow of my left arm, the Fallen herself looking at me with an entirely different glint in her eye than the one she had been using before. "A training session?" She echoed. "Then you must have been with Lord Azazel all day, right?"

I grimaced, fighting the urge to just project a shield between us and run from the conversation, but apparently my lack of a response was taken as confirmation.

"You're so lucky…" Raynare whispered, the light of fanaticism taking hold in her eyes. "Spending a whole day with Lord Azazel himself, having his whole attention on you, speaking with him, _doing things_ with him…"

I had the distinct impression that Raynare's definition of 'doing things' was a whole hell of a lot different than mine, or at least in the context of Azazel and I - but before I could voice anything like that, she turned to wrap her _other_ arm around mine as well, sandwiching my limb in her chest and becoming far, _far_ too close for comfort.

"Well, if you're going for a rest, how about I help you _relax~?"_ She drawled, sinking back into the act she'd put on before - but the fanatical light in her eyes hadn't gone out yet, and I knew the whole facade was hollow in any case.

Raynare was among the group of Fallen who had a somewhat _different_ view of me than Mittelt and her group - namely that, rather than truly being a human who had been effectively stuffed into a Fallen's 'body', I was Azazel's illegitimate child who he was covering for.

Fallen Angels are immortal, purely magical beings hand-sculpted by God himself.

They are also, in many cases, total fucking idiots - and gossip lovers, to boot.

A certain division of the Fallen truly believed that little rumour. A division largely made up of Azazel's more... _enthusiastic..._ underlings. He had a real cult of personality among the Grigori, it being a large part of why he was the Governor, but Raynare's type were borderline creepy-online-stalker yandere archetypes, who would do anything and everything for their lord and saviour Azazel.

Including trying to get closer to him through his 'son' - something which must have failed quite miserably with Vali (and oh man, but this environment couldn't have been good for his judgement or sanity), but which they seemed perfectly willing to try with me.

Not all of them took Raynare's approach. Some made overblown efforts to befriend me which came closer to treating me like a VIP; others were somewhat more subtle, but slipped up if I ever mentioned Azazel himself (which had frankly become akin to an item on a checklist for meeting a new Fallen; wait for insult or introduction, turn and walk away or shake hand, name-drop Azazel and see what they do).

Raynare, however, was by far the most over-the-top. Or at least in terms of how ridiculous, disturbing and irritating her actions managed to be simultaneously.

I didn't follow her logic, seeing no way in which seducing the man's illegitimate child could somehow bring Raynare closer to relationship with the Fallen Governor outside of some really awful, convoluted porno plotline involving incest and netorare…

' _And suddenly, I feel like I understand something very important about Fallen thought-processes.'_

" _Not_ the kind of relaxation I had in mind." I declared, managing to retrieve my arm with a quick step forward and a twist. "And I _really_ need to rest, so, if you'll excuse me…"

I started walking briskly away, stiff-backed and almost waiting for her to try grabbing me again.

I breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't...then was struck by the realisation that I could hear her boots clicking on the stone floor as we walked. ' _She's following me. Is she going to try something like Mittelt? No, probably not - not with her previous behaviour. It'd be too big a leap._

' _So what's she trying to d-'_

I was almost to my room's door when a horrid thought entered my mind. ' _She's following me to my room.'_

I considered the possibility of Raynare knowing where my room was.

I considered the fact that one way or another, that information _would_ get out.

So I was forced to consider the possibility of _the entire Grigori_ knowing where my room was.

And that was when I made an executive decision...

"Fuck today."

And jumped head-first out the nearest window, spreading my wings and curving up into the sky and away from the bullshit my life had become.

"Drew! Wait for meeee!"

I glanced over my shoulder and caught sight of Raynare jumping out the same window.

"Hey, trash! I wasn't finished with you yesterday!"

Looking over my _other_ shoulder, I caught sight of Mittelt, rising into the air from one of the many balcony/launch-pads the headquarters had incorporated into its design, a pink spear already in her hands.

Then I faced forward with a perfectly empty expression on my face, feeling as if some kind of internal limit was drawing rapidly closer.

' _96%...97%...98%…'_

A pink spear went whizzing past my ear, and I heard Raynare yelling "You flat-chested bitch, don't you dare ruin my chance to get closer to Lord Azazel!" before the sounds of light spears clashing began to echo through the skies over the Grigori Headquarters - sounds which grew increasingly louder as more and more Fallen joined the conflict, the fight-happy race using the excuse to take a swing at anyone they had the vaguest grudge against or even just someone who was in swinging distance.

I heard all of this, and experienced the curious sensation of something fraying in my mind.

' _99%...'_

"...If I don't kill something soon," I considered, "I'm not going to be held responsible for what happens."

* * *

Azazel looked out the window of his tower-top laboratory, pushing his goggles away from his eyes to rest on his forehead, and observed the massive tangle of wings, bodies, spears and limbs that had formed in the air over his headquarters.

He sighed, rubbing the back of his head with one gloved hand. "Four days since he arrived and he's already got most of the Grigori chasing after him…"

Abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed, clutching his chest with his other hand. "Oh, this kid's too much - I haven't had this much entertainment in decades!"

He continued laughing for a few moments longer, until a whistling sound began to emanate from behind him and he blinked. "Oh yeah...I didn't turn off th-"

* * *

My eyebrow twitched as one of the towers exploded for no apparent reason.

' _100.'_

* * *

Sirzechs Lucifer, who was spending the day staring morosely at his desk of paperwork as he sat in his office, blinked and sat up a bit as he turned towards his window, which overlooked the Devil Capital of Lilith. "Was that a scream?"

* * *

 **(PSIness11): I'm so excited for people to see my OC.**

 **To be fair, a great deal of care, attention to detail and…*snort***

 **Dammit, I can't even finish typing that with a straight face.**

 **(PSIness11): I put hours (45 minutes) of work into making that character bio.**

 **And I spent five minutes correcting the grammar, spelling and punctuation. But I know for a fact that you took about three seconds to conceive the character off the top of your head.**

 **(PSIness11): Three seconds to think of the greatest OC I've ever made. I'll be honest, that OC is such a bizarre mix of abilities and personality traits. Thinking of a Sacred Gear for him was challenging and fun.**

 **Well, he's really fun to write, so I'm not complaining.**

 **Now, on to the** **Reviews!**

 **-Mzr90, Ch. 1 - Thanks!**

 **-The Ultimate Balance Chaos, Ch. 1 - Well, here's some more for you.**

 **-RevansStories, Ch. 1 - Hopefully you enjoyed it.**

 **-'Ibn', Ch. 1 - Le gasp; I'd never have guessed! Yeah, I honestly wasn't expecting this story instead of an update either but *shrug* watcha gonna do? Anyway, hopefully Drew will prove to have some worth as a character, and I'll look forward to playing with this new sandbox I've been given. :)**

 **(PSIness11): Teninshigen wanted to play around in the sandbox that is this story, only for a few minutes. I'm the man who slammed his head into the sand, and told him he ain't leaving.**

 **-Fat Future Cat, Ch. 1 - There are a depressingly large number of stories like that, aren't there? I swear, all the even vaguely Fallen-centric stories in the archive seem to be OC x Akeno angst-fests… Still, I hope I can give some depth to the Fallen in this story. Their characters, their history, their existences, their organisation...all that stuff.**

 **(PSIness11): Many DxD fics are so fucking edgy I can feel my eyes bleeding just looking at them.**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 1 - Well now you don't have to :)**

 **(PSIness11): We've pre-written a good bit.**

 **-RadioPoisoning, Ch. 1 - A lot of fanfic writers like to stick to their chosen show's guns; so it was inevitable that an opening like that would become cliché. Still, I had an idea I found more interesting, so I'm rolling with it. As you already guessed, being a 'perfect' Fallen-Human hybrid effectively grants that human spark to the mix, which in this story is going to be a pretty big deal in the end. It's not some kind of Sacred Gear-esque insta-boost...but it means the ability to use willpower and bullshit as tools or weapons, which is all one of my character should ever need. Fallen (or the rank and file at least) won't necessarily be all that more powerful, but I'll be exploring the abilities of a Fallen as I feel they can be extrapolated from what we're shown, and not just in Drew's case. And, as far as romance in** _ **this**_ **story is concerned...well, Drew already said it. 'Don't stick your dick in crazy.' Finding** _ **one**_ **decently-sane character to pair him with would be difficult enough; finding** _ **more**_ **than one? Hercules would quit before he finished** _**that**_ **task.**

 **(PSIness11): Ah yes, the human spirit. The driving spark that motivates us all, and gives humanity an edge in the DxD world. This is what I think makes Drew's character so interesting. He is a human, with essentially the power to shape and bend holy light to his will. Not to mention Drew has prior knowledge, and knows a ton about other mediums of fiction. You'll see how he manipulates and develops his power, far above the lower level fallen.**

 **-Narutu-Uzu-Uchiha, Ch. 1 - Thanks for your support; I hope you enjoy this story as it progresses. I have much the same opinion, so I'm going to have some** _ **fun**_ **with this fic :)**

 **-xanothos, Ch. 1 - Holy shit, this might be the first time I've had someone following a story of mine whose story I** _ **also**_ **follow; I've been enjoying Not Playing With A Full Deck, just so you know :) Thanks for your support; I hope I can keep your interest.**

 **-Awayuki, Ch. 1 - I'll keep it in mind; I hope not to end up with legions of OCs, but for a show which considers the existence of every mythos, the core DxD cast is...kinda limited. So, I might end up needing more ideas than Ness and I can come up with.**

 **(PSIness11): I have plenty of ideas… Many of them bad.**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 1 - Romance in this story is not even a consideration thus far, and would largely depend on there existing a sane, stable, reasonable girl in Highschool DxD.**

 **(PSIness11): And with the OC I created? NO NO NO! You'll see why next chapter.**

 **End of Reviews**

 **(PSIness11): I think I've legitimately outdone myself with character creation. There will be nothing better.**

 **You know what? I think you're right.**

 **Well, that's this chapter done with; we'll see you all next time, where Drew makes a new friend in the ancient manner of the shounen genre.**

 **(PSIness11): Like how you and I became friends. Although with a considerably lower body count.**

 **Indeed. May God have mercy on his soul.**

 **...Oh, wait-**

* * *

 **[{Ness's Corner}]**

 **TFW you make a character that is a mix of DIO, Hol Horse, Rudol Von Stroheim, and pure, unadulterated, american nationalism.**

 **My life is complete.**


	3. Star-Spangled Bullshit

I walked into the joint office-space of Azazel, Shemhazai and Baraqiel after a full twelve hours' calming in the wake of my minor breakdown.

I had seemingly underestimated just what a effect intense emotions could have on the way my body shaped itself, since what had meant to be a scream which could vent some of my frustrations had instead become a sonic weapon.

Thankfully that change had reverted once I calmed down a bit, and if I could ever re-produce the effect it could be a useful trick. But it had also successfully deafened a good chunk of all the Fallen Angels in the Grigori, so I had taken the opportunity to hide in my room and calm the fuck down for a while.

Now, with my head on straight, I making slightly more productive use of my time.

Shemhazai and Baraqiel were both looking at the door when I came in, having already knocked and received an invitation to enter. "Ah, good morning Drew." The former greeted me, the latter offering a nod of acknowledgement but not speaking. "I hope you're not here to give Azazel another excuse to get out of his paperwork?"

A lazy "I resemble that remark!" drifted through the door to Azazel's workspace, and Shemhazai's eyebrow twitched.

"Not right now." I replied, shaking my head. "I actually wanted to ask if I could get something to do."

The lavender-haired Fallen raised an eyebrow, and I gave him a mostly blank look. "In the past week I've been stabbed to death, killed a man, woken up as a Fallen Angel, been poked and prodded by a former Archangel, had various Fallen Angels inform me of their intent to string me up with various parts of my own anatomy, had _others_ try everything from offering tours of the building to outright seducing me, and just yesterday I found myself considering it a reasonable response to jump headfirst out a window and fly off - but I ended up causing a brawl that encompassed most of the Grigori, then deafened them all with my own scream.

"If I don't get something to do _right now,_ I am going to _snap_ \- and I don't feel like making the extra work for Coretha."

Baraqiel grunted. "Just give him one of the search and destroy missions; he can burn off some steam that way and we can let the clamour quiet down."

Search and destroy sounded _really good_ to me at that moment, and it probably showed on my face since Shemhazai reached into the paperwork adorning his desk and retrieved a small sheaf of papers that he handed to me.

"As a matter of course, we use familiars to scout our various territories on Earth." The Vice-Governor informed me, as I took the papers and examined the picture on the front - which seemed to be a top-down view of some kind of military base. "This is an image taken in New Jersey, in America. Do you notice anything in particular?"

I frowned, squinting slightly at the paper and willing the image to become clearer.

It obliged visa-vis my eyes, and I scanned the picture to try and figure out what Shemhazai wanted me to find - something that only took a few moments.

"What _is_ that?" I asked, disgust probably evident in my voice as I stared at the figure my eyes had locked onto.

It must have been pretty damn big, considering its scale in comparison to the buildings around it; the body seemed vaguely canine, with four legs and a tail, covered in shaggy hair the colour of old blood, but rising from where the neck would have been was what I thought was a top-down view of a shirtless man.

Something about it rankled, creating a similar sensation to the hairs on the back of my neck rising up - if I still _had_ any hairs there, that is. The vast majority of my body-hair had gone with my human body, leaving only what was on my head and one other place. I'd probably be able to change that once I got a better handle on shifting my form, but that was something I hadn't really delved into during my 'training' with Azazel, and it wasn't exactly a priority.

" _That_ , is a Stray Devil." Shemhazai informed me, and I looked up sharply as he gestured to the photo. "We don't know who its master was or what its circumstances are, but it approached the military base two days ago and only a few of the soldiers have been confirmed to have made it out alive - several of them badly wounded."

My frown deepened as I stared at the picture again, Shemhazai still speaking. "Since the Stray hasn't appeared since its entry of the base, we haven't dispatched anyone yet - New Jersey's Fallen contingent are almost entirely based in New York, and they're tied up just trying to keep a lid on that mess of a city.

"But, if you really want a chance to stretch your wings, then this is your opportunity."

I wasn't really seeing the picture in front of me, though my eyes were open and directed at it. Instead, I was recalling my own last moments, considering the muffling of thought and senses that had, at the time, seemed almost peaceful...but that, looking back on them, scared me badly.

Those men and women hadn't had anything like a 'peaceful' demise. When I flipped over the front page, I found a compilation of the information the familiar had gathered, including a list of the casualties and fatalities.

Among those who lived, only two would be able to return to active service. The others were maimed too badly, in some cases missing entire limbs.

The designation of the Stray Devil _switched_ in my mind. From 'potential victim of abusive master'...

To ' _acceptable target.'_

I looked up from the paper, meeting Shemhazai's calm gaze with conviction. "When can I leave?"

* * *

Half an hour later, I was standing on Earth once again.

I took a few moments just to close my eyes and tilt my head back, experiencing my homeworld through my new senses.

It was a minor miracle to feel the wind on my face once again, and compared to the Underworld - where what little life existed there was small and either very good at hiding or very good at killing anything that came across it - the presence of the many and myriad murmurs and musics of mammals and nocturnal birds was like the return of something I didn't even realise I was missing.

Opening my eyes again, I looked around at a world painted in shades of gray and silver beneath the moon. The shadows that would have once confounded me parted easily, the eyes of a Fallen Angel proving more than a match for them.

I swept the area around me with a turn on my heel, getting a feel for where I'd been teleported.

Shemhazai had told me I was going to be placed within the outer perimeter of walls, barbed wire, towers and patrol paths that served as the base's boundary, an extra precaution against discovery by humans. Their agents in the military and government had already been stretched delaying any response to the base's invasion as long as they had, meaning I had only one night to try and do away with the Stray in a fairly non-flashy manner.

With magic that revolved entirely around flashes and bright lights.

At _night_.

' _If some sniper or other soldier-type's decided to go off the rails a bit and keep an eye on this place, they're sure going to get a show.'_ I thought grimly to myself, finishing my look around and considering where I should make my first move towards.

I was standing on the tarmac of an airstrip, which was fairly central to the base and possessed a control tower at one end, opposite the road to the large, half-cylinder hangars where vehicles and other supplies were stored.

The barracks were on the other side of the base, with the canteen nearby and the sanitation/hygiene area at a similarly short distance. The administration facilities were set apart from that group of buildings, and the armoury was roughly equidistant between the hangars and the barracks.

That was all the detailing that had been on the sketched map which composed the final sheet of paper in the sheaf Shemhazai had given me, and I made the decision to start at the barracks.

The Stray would have likely targeted the highest concentration of humans first.

I made my way across the tarmac, which exchanged itself for dirt and grass before too long, my strides eating up the distance to the barracks until I had a better look at the building. Or, more accurately, the ruin.

The walls had been just about torn down in a lot of places, leaving the roof sagging and a significant portion of the second floor collapsed. There was a particularly massive hole bulldozed in the side of the building that seemed to indicate a point where the Stray had straight-up plowed through it, and when I looked through the hole I found myself thankful that I didn't have a stomach any more and hadn't eaten anything to have thrown up in days anyway.

I still ended up bending over double and retching, though, until I could project a bubble of Light from around my mouth and nose to block out the smell and let me get myself under control without the constant assault.

Standing straight again, I found that my perfect night vision wasn't entirely a blessing, as it let me take in every detail of the deformed, defiled corpses that were scattered hither and yon within.

Crushed, torn, ripped apart and slashed to pieces; parts of the bodies were barely recognisable as human any more, and I doubted anyone would ever have been capable of truly knowing just what belonged to who in the blood-soaked mess. A couple of faces were still recognisable - the only one within casual viewing distance bore an expression which I thought was fear or anger.

Perhaps both.

I scanned the area once more, wanting to move on but not wanting to miss anything, and I made note of the spent casings and discarded (often broken) weapons lying about, along with the deep claw marks gouged into the floor and the craters likely born from astonishing amounts of brute force considering the spiderweb cracks emanating from them.

Then I turned away, leaving the barracks behind to continue my search elsewhere.

The night was still young.

* * *

An hour later or thereabouts, I had finished going through the main buildings, and took a moment to lean against one of the steel girders that had once served as support for the armoury's walls.

From _inside_ the walls.

The girder was both exposed and bent at ninety degrees, now - and it was missing several feet from the end, the metal shorn away by supernaturally sharp claws and brute strength.

I took in air, held it, then let it out again. The breathing exercise didn't alter my heart-rate or the amount of oxygen in my blood as it once would have done, but even as a placebo it helped me centre myself.

And I _really_ needed some stability.

I had counted a total of eighty-four corpses as I searched the buildings, each one seemingly in worse condition than the last - both the buildings and the bodies. The piles of rubble were stained red and black with dry blood, white powder that probably used to be bone or concrete mixed into it along with the occasional hunk of meat or vaguely identifiable body part.

Some bodies were properly recognisable, but were still as dead as dead could be. Decapitation, ruined throats, collapsed rib-cages, impalement, rampant blood loss from dozens of smaller wounds that must have been intended to cause a prolonged death…

I shoved the memories to the back of my mind, standing up firmly as the metal of the girder squealed under my hand with my grip. I had searched just about all the buildings on the base, now - the only places left to look were the hangars and the control tower.

' _Well, it's a common trope that arrogant antagonists hole themselves up in the tallest nearby building.'_

I approached the tower cautiously, willing its walls into focus as I approached and studying them.

The tower was actually in decent shape, all things considered; there was one large 'entry wound' in its side, much like there had been in the barracks, but all other damage seemed to be incidental to that.

I pressed my back to the concrete as I finally reached the building, inching sideways until I was positioned just beside the gaping hole. There, I craned my neck to look inside, keeping my body hidden by the wall to minimize the chance of my being noticed.

I then quickly withdrew once I saw a great, shaggy body lying on the floor, stained and encrusted with the remains of human beings.

I'd found my quarry.

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a breath in and holding it. I remembered all the bodies I'd seen, the images of the survivors, and I imagined all the pain, all the heartache and tragedy the Stray had brought about without the slightest regard.

Two shimmering replicas of a Webley Mk VI revolver snapped into being in my hands, and as I spun around the corner I unsheathed my wings, which began to glow as I projected Light element along their surfaces - allowing them to pull triple-duty as transport, shield and blade.

I didn't bother with some one-liner or other saying that could give the monster time to react. I just let my weapons speak for me as I pulled the triggers, my own belief of 'pulled trigger = bullet fired' allowing me to effectively conjure the Light bullets they were firing without having to focus on them beforehand. A useful little trick of mentality, and one that amounted to quite a lot when I didn't have to reload and I had the trigger-fingers of a Fallen Angel.

The space between me and the Stray Devil lit up like a christmas tree as a horizontal rain of burning projectiles raced forward, the volleys slamming home into the monstrous pseudo-canine flesh of its body and rapidly reducing it to so much smoking meat and ash.

I kept up the barrage for two seconds, digging a rather significant crater in doing so, before strafing backwards with a flap of my wings to create distance, anticipating a counter-attack. Stray Devils' power grew unchecked without their Kings, so I wasn't willing to bet my speed was enough to keep me unscathed.

I kept the revolvers aimed at the hole in the wall as I came to a stop, ready to head left, right or up if I saw motion incoming.

And I stayed that way for several seconds, before frowning.

There wasn't even a noise from the tower; the only sounds were those of the nightlife and the wind in the grass. There was certainly nothing like the primordial, bestial howl of rage and bloodlust I had been expecting.

I narrowed my eyes and focussed, the massive body springing into focus…

And I blinked. "It's already dead?"

I voiced the question to myself, but I was already sure. The holes I had blown in its flesh were barely bleeding, and what did emerge was thick and sluggish, as if it was in the process of drying out already. There hadn't been even a twitch of movement from what I was now sure was a corpse and, to top it off, I couldn't feel anything from the tower when I aimed my fledgling sensory abilities at it.

Somehow, the Stray was already dead. ' _And that means something killed it.'_

My eyes darted around the base again, narrowed and scanning for anything out of place. It was one thing to hunt a creature the size of a large vehicle; it was quite another to possibly be in close proximity to a completely unknown target with the ability to kill said creature.

I kept my guns up and sweeping around me as I strode back to the tower, flicking my eyes over my shoulder every few steps as I backed into the gap and along the length of the Stray Devil - which I now realised had collapsed in death, rather than sleep. Once I reached its neck area, I glanced sideways, trying to discern how it had died.

...Honestly, it was a bit difficult to tell considering how _comprehensively fucked_ its humanoid torso was.

It was riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes - but beyond that, there were myriad tiny punctures as if flechettes or shrapnel of some kind had erupted from within it, as well as burned and blasted areas that looked like they had been victim to a flamethrower or explosive.

' _Did the soldiers do this?'_ I wondered momentarily, before disregarding the possibility. ' _No, if it was vulnerable to small-arms fire like they were using then they would have taken it down easily; they were trained soldiers after all, they could hardly miss a target like this._

' _But I'm sure these are bullet wounds…'_ I considered, frowning at the devastated corpse (it was also headless - decapitated in a way that reminded me very clearly of what happened to melons in test-fire videos). ' _So someone came from off the base with heavier ordinance?'_

Ordinance heavy enough to kill a Stray Devil though sheer firepower...that thought made my wings shiver.

So, the evidence pointed to there having been some kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger-level gunslinger on the base in the past forty-eight hours; likely one who was aware of the supernatural, considering the odds of someone so heavily armed just happening to be in the area.

' _I suppose it fits the world.'_ I admitted to myself, before looking around the tower's ruined ground floor interior once more, shivering again as I kept my wings raised and curled forward - a kind of protective curtain for my flanks that covered from my waist up to my neck. ' _Well, they're likely not here if I haven't found them yet; I'll head back to the extraction point and wait for Shemhazai to-'_

Something very fast but not exactly small blew past my nose with barely an inch to spare, crossing my vision so quickly my eyes could barely catch it before the concrete wall to my left developed a new hole and spiderweb cracks.

I froze for a moment out of shock, the thunderous report of a gun firing catching up to the bullet less than second later, before spinning to look out the hole in the tower, finding myself facing a human figure with a smoking gun extended.

"I reckon it's getting a bit close to daylight for one of your type to be lurking 'round these parts." A southern drawl declared, before the _click_ of a hammer being pulled down echoed into the now-silent night. "You'd best be running home, _boy."_

The man speaking looked like he was in his early-to-mid twenties, standing over six feet tall with an explosively spiky mess of sandy-blond hair that shaded his sunglasses from the moonlight.

Yes. Sunglasses.

Below those there was a dark-green military-style jacket hanging open and fairly loose on his torso, over a tight-stretched, brighter-green tank-top. Then, wrapped over that, was a black bandolier bearing six grenades.

There were two each of two different types of cylindrical grenade, as well as another pair of spherical grenades - explosives I recognised as flash-bang, HE and frag grenades from my rather brief time playing Counterstrike.

Besides that, he was dressed in desert-camouflage trousers, tucked into black combat boots and held up by a belt which boasted several pouches that, going by the theme of things, probably contained ammunition. They were arrayed from near his hips to on either side of the belt-buckle, while on his hips themselves were pistol holsters, one on each side with one occupied, and sheathed knives - again, one for each side.

But the main focus of my gaze was the massive silver revolver held easily in his right hand and aimed right at me - with a side-focus on the brother weapon I could see his left hand resting on at his hip.

I narrowed my eyes, readjusting my wings so they were ready to furl closed in front of me while bringing both my revolvers to bear. "I'm not a vampire and I'm not a Devil, so I'm gonna say I resent your attempt to deny me my right to sunlight." I replied. "And you should know that - unless I'm missing my guess and you _weren't_ the one who put down that Stray."

"If all you supernatural critters have such an attraction to the sun I'd be glad to _load you into a rocket and give you an introduction!"_ He declared, shrugging with his left shoulder. "Besides, ya seen one winged man with glowin' eyes, you've seen 'em all."

My eyebrow twitched. "Well aren't you just a walking stereotype." I riposted. "Why the sunglasses? Did you spend too long staring at a burning cross before coming out here?"

I regretted the words just moments after they left my mouth - but admittedly, my transition from being a pureblood human to something... _else_ , was still a bit of a store point.

And I'd kinda watched Kingsman again not so long before my death.

"Now son," the man said slowly, reaching up with his left hand and removing his sunglasses, revealing dark-green eyes that seemed more like emerald from the hard look in them, " _that_ , was uncalled for."

He tucked the sunglasses inside his jacket, before dropping his hand to his other revolver once again. "I've seen some thing in my time." He declared. "I've seen monsters and spirits, Stray Devils...I've even seen your kind before; for a whole race of light-wielders you're all kinda dim."

My eyebrow twitched again.

"And apart from the rampant stupidity and tendency for turnin' good folks into hamburgers, y'all have only got one thing in common."

There was a blur of motion as his left hand drew the revolver, spun it around, cocked it and then levelled it at me quicker than I could properly track it.

"The looks on your faces when a human fights back."

I barely strafed out of the way in time before the thunderous retorts began, getting myself behind the concrete wall and hunkering down - and a good thing too, since the bullets started tearing chunks out of the wall around the height of my torso.

I counted off the rounds, waiting until I'd heard ten distinct shots - that was when there was a break, so I guessed that was the revolvers' capacity.

I rolled out from behind the wall, coming up on a knee with my wings folded in front of my body and my revolvers up - and found myself staring right at a pinless grenade.

"SHIT!"

I barely got my wings in front of my face before the explosive went off, concussive force and tongues of flame picking me up and slamming me into the back wall of the tower.

I pushed away the screaming damage report from my newest limbs, instead deciding they were too big a target and folding them away to heal as I fired wildly into the night outside to buy myself a moment.

The gunman flung himself sideways out of the bullets' path, out of my line of sight - giving me time to run to the stairwell and head to the tower's second floor.

Once I was there, I hunkered down against the wall below one of the still-intact panes of glass that had served as a significant portion of the second floor's walls, rising slightly to peek over the edge and look down.

I scanned the area, quickly picking out the form of the gunman pacing towards the tower, and put my hands together.

The revolver constructs lost their form and swirled together into a ball of light, which quickly elongated into the form of a Lee Enfield rifle. Swinging the weapon's butt into the glass panel to my right, I stood up with a left turn and aimed out of the pane two along from the one I'd shattered.

' _He'll be distracted by the shattered glass - so long as he's looking this way, I should be able to aim for injury rather than death.'_

I didn't particularly want to kill the guy. In fact, I didn't want to _period._ There weren't enough people out there fighting purely for humanity in this clusterfuck of a world, and I didn't want to be responsible for killing any of those.

...Alright, I'd _love_ to pop a cap in Cao Cao, but this guy wasn't Cao Cao, and I wasn't going to try and shoot him for having a piss-poor (and honestly rather accurate) opinion of the supernatural.

So, I aimed for his left leg, figuring there were any number of ways to get around that kind of injury in this world even if I did more damage than I intended to, then pulled the trigger-

But the light-bullet passed straight through where the man's limb had been, as he seemed to suddenly vanish from that spot and reappear a foot backwards.

' _...What the fuck?'_

I threw myself backwards from the space where a pane of glass had existed before I shot through it, barely getting away from the volley of bullets that started occupying the space I had moments before and then punching holes in the roof.

I ran doubled-over to the other side of the tower, wrapping myself in a thin shroud of Light and throwing myself out a window without hesitation. The curtain of magic kept the glass fragments off me, and I dismissed it when I hit the ground and rolled forward to dismiss the momentum, the rifle in my hands twisting once again.

By the time I had twisted to face the building once again, the shift had ended on an L85 rifle - and as I depressed the trigger a constant stream of bullets started tearing their way through the tower wall and out the hole on the other side of the building.

I kept up the fire for a few seconds, strafing it back and forth across the wall, before I took my finger off the trigger.

There was silence for a few moments - then a duo of explosions went off that demolished the part of the wall I was facing, sending rubble everywhere and forcing me to abandon my rifle-construct in favour of a shield.

The rubble hadn't even settled when that shield came under assault, chunks blasted out of it by high-velocity projectiles as I oh-so-helpfully provided the gunman a big glowing target to shoot at.

I left the shield rooted in place as I rolled out from behind it, running bent over again and hoping that solely human night-vision would be poor enough to let me get some distance so I could plan.

Such was apparently the case, since I made it most of the way to a hangar before a shout echoed across the tarmac. "ALRIGHT, CHICKEN BOY - IF IT'S A DUCK HUNT YOU WANT, IT'S A DUCK HUNT YOU'LL GET!"

' _Man, Raynare probably would've flipped her shit at that one.'_ I considered, utterly unphased by the Fallen-aimed insult.

I shoulder-charged by way into the hangar wall, tearing a me-shaped hole in it and continuing through into the pitch-black, desolate building. Then, once inside, I deployed my wings and shot up to the rafters, where I balanced in a crouch and waited, watching the hole I'd made and the door adjacent to it.

As I waited, consciously making the decision not to breathe so as to remain silent, I thought back to that moment when the gunman had evaded my shot. ' _There was no motion blur, like with when he drew his gun; he was just in one position when I fired, and another when the bullet passed through.'_

I considered whether I could have mis-aimed or if it was some kind of illusion - but illusionists tended to be certain personality types, usually the quiet ones, and if they were worth their salt I'd never have even perceived them.

There was also the possibility that the entire encounter was an illusion of some kind - but then again, illusionists usually had some kind of standard; they'd know better than to create such an overblown personality.

It was unlikely that I mis-aimed, either. I had the eyesight and hand-eye coordination of a Fallen Angel, along with weapons that had no recoil, no faults in the mechanisms and no weight, with the same applying to the shots fired.

Even with only my basic knowledge of firearm handling could hit a bullseye from clear across one of Azazel's training rooms so long as I had a moment to focus. ' _So he dodged - but he didn't_ move.'

A teleporter of some kind, then - maybe he was a Sacred Gear user?

That could explain his knowledge of the supernatural. In fact, if he was a teleporter of some kind it would also explain how he'd amassed such an armoury. He could have broken into military stockpiles and gotten away scot-free; hell, the supernatural would have made sure to erase the memories of his actions if he was ever caught on tape, since that would be evidence of the supernatural's existence.

So I was fighting a teleporter. That meant I needed to take him completely by surprise. If he had any time to react at all, I'd miss.

That in mind, I crept along the girders which served as rafters, then carefully hooked my knees over the structure before letting my body hang upside-down with my head directly above the entrance to the hangar. ' _It's a good thing I don't have blood or a brain anymore, or else this would get really uncomfortable really quickly.'_

Still, this should work. I'd wait for him to enter (he'd probably either kick the door down or blast a new entrance into existence, neither of which would affect me), then drop down from the girder directly behind him and knock him unconscious. The sudden shift to close-quarters and the lack of warning of the assault should be enough.

So I hung and I waited, feeling a bit like Batman…

Right until something cylindrical bounced and rolled into the hangar through the hole I'd made. ' _...Is that a flas-'_

A wall of sound was accompanied by a light like a new sun, both contained by the hangar and made considerably worse, and I lost my grip on the girder in the ensuing sensory onslaught.

I had barely enough sense to spread my wings and catch myself in the air before I hit the ground, but as I swept along at ground-level bullets started flying after me.

I'd barely managed to reinforce my wings with Light before a slug hit one massive appendage, immediately sending me into a spin that continued even as I hit the floor, keeping me tumbling along until I crashed into the wall of the warehouse.

"Fucking flashy Americans…" I grumbled to myself (probably - I couldn't actually hear jack shit), forming a knife and slashing a quick exit from the building. I ran from the hangar into the night, shunting away the pain radiating from my right wing but acknowledging I probably wouldn't be getting any more use from it that night even as I drew it back into myself.

I sorted through half a dozen plans in a second, before deciding to double back around. Making some obvious running sounds at the back of the hangar before using all my practiced skill to run the distance along the building's exterior in only a few seconds, ducking back around just in time to see the gunman's back disappearing around the opposite corner.

I figured that would buy me a minute, so I ducked back into the hangar through the same hold I'd made at first, making sure to avoid the scorch-mark so I wouldn't leave any footprints…

I frowned as I stepped around the black mark from the grenade. Something was wrong, here. There was something missing…

"Fool me once, shame on me." A southern drawl spoke from behind me. "But ain't one of you supernaturals managed to fool me twice."

I didn't waste time on my magic or a response, instead abruptly bending over to brace my hands on the floor and rear my legs up to my chest before delivering the best mule-kick I knew how. Somewhat to my own surprise, I connected solidly, lifting the big gunman off the ground and tossing him a few foot onto the grass, where he landed with a _thump._

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I formed a pulsating sphere of Light in my hand before tossing it at him and turning to run.

I heard the thunderous report of the gun - I'd expected it; the guy could _shoot_ , and I didn't doubt he'd easily be able to take out the sphere before it got close.

Of course, considering it was the Light magic equivalent of flash-bang, that wasn't the best strategy.

The night became noon for an instant as the construct shattered, casting my shadow dozens of feet in front of me as I ran for the devastated barracks building. ' _That'll buy me time as his vision recovers.'_ I thought to myself as I sprinted. ' _But now I need to_ think.'

Something didn't add up. If the gunman was a teleporter, how had I managed to get a hit on him when he clearly saw me coming? Was there a cooldown on the ability…? Maybe, but that didn't seem right.

Something about that scorch-mark on the hangar floor was nagging at me; some detail, some missing piece that should have been _obvious…_

I growled quietly as I lost myself in the corridors of the barracks, reaching one of the few parts of the second floor that was still intact and hunkering down inside a doorway to a corpse-less room. I closed my eyes for a moment, pressing my hands to my head and squeezing.

' _Think...think! What was it about the scorch-mark? I know flash-bangs leave those behind, it's normal; even if they aren't as powerful as frag-'_

I paused. ' _Frag. Frag grenades._ Shrapnel.'

A half-dozen possibilities sprang to mind immediately, and I began trying to plan a way to prove or disprove them-

Then that damnably smooth voice echoed from outside the barracks. "Peek-a-boo, goosey!"

I barely had time to think an incredulous ' _Goosey?!'_ before the spherical figures of two M69 frag grenades appeared outside the room's window.

I was already diving for the window in the room across the corridor when the revolvers spoke again, and the pressure wave carried me the rest of my journey with the accompaniment of innumerable small punctures and lacerations from shrapnel and rubble.

I crashed through the window face-first, starting to flip as my knees caught on the wall below it during the exit, and hit the ground with my face as bits of the barracks rained around me.

It took me several seconds to muster up enough willpower for me to shunt the pain away, but I did, grimacing at the almost disturbingly painless sensation of small pieces of metal and concrete shifting around inside me as I stood up.

A wet stickiness was obvious on my back, and I resisted the urge to curse.

The phrase 'If it bleeds, we can kill it.' was quite popular in modern days. In this world, apparently, the phrase _should_ have gone 'If you can kill it, it bleeds.' - because even though we didn't have circulatory systems (unless we wanted to anyway), Fallen Angels and Angels still bled if they received a sufficiently grievous injury.

Azazel said it was 'ichor', rather than blood. Which, to be fair, would explain why it was black for Fallen and golden for Angels. It was the same stuff which Gods, Demons and other types of spirit would bleed if they were badly injured, an incredibly magical liquid that was usually defined as the 'substance' of any primarily formless supernatural being.

Like, say, a Fallen Angel.

The fact that I was bleeding meant that between my wings and that last blast, I'd taken enough injuries to actually put me at risk. That made my plan more dangerous - but I was already committed by way of not having any better ideas.

I reformed the Webleys, leaving them dangling by my sides, and waited as the gunman came walking around the side of the building, cool as anything.

I glanced at his bandolier - and seeing the spherical objects there, I revised my earlier judgement, instead settling on the most viable remaining theory. ' _Not a teleporter; not even_ close.'

I had an idea of what I was facing, now. Hopefully I'd be able to use it without getting myself killed, and to that end, I began a count in my mind.

"So you finally found your head to put back on, chicken boy?" The gunman drawled, revolvers still in hand but apparently deciding to see what had changed to make me stand my ground.

"More like I finally put it to good use." I replied. "I'll admit, it took me a while...but I've figured out what your ability is."

"Oh _really?"_

"Yes, ' _really'_." I drawled right back at him, absolutely butchering his accent but not feeling particularly ashamed about doing so. "At first, I thought you were a teleporter of some kind, what with the way you dodged my first shot…

"But in the hangar, where your flash-bang went off - there _wasn't any shrapnel._

"These eyes," I narrowed them for emphasis, having learned from watching other Fallen do the same thing that it would cause them to glow slightly, "are better than any magnifying glass. If there was anything left of that grenade like there should have been, I'd have seen it.

"But the only evidence was a scorch-mark.

"Then there's your grenades." I continued, gesturing to his bandolier with a twitch of one hand. "You've used three frags, a flash-bang and two HEs since this fight started; but _you've still got two of each on your bandolier."_

I grinned. "You're not some kind of teleporter or speedster - you're a _time manipulator."_

There was silence for a few moments, before it was broken by a long whistle. "Well, I'll be damned; one of you critters knows how to use their damn brain.

"Y'know, the first of your kind that came after me did it 'cause they wanted me dead for what I could do?" He pseudo-asked, not waiting for an answer before continuing. "I didn't even really know what all I was capable of back then - not before some pasty foreigner tried to make a kebab outta me.

"I ended up learnin' a whole lot from him before he bought it." The man recalled, not taking his guns off me for a moment. "'Sacred Gears', 'Angels', 'Fallen Angels', 'Devils'...oh man, he just couldn't _shut up!"_

The gunman sighed. "Well, he was quiet after I stuck a gun down his throat and gave him a lead stomach for his acid tongue."

I didn't say anything as he looked up again, meeting my eyes. "Seems it's the way of things for you supernatural types to go 'round killin' kids for things they don't know about; that or turnin' 'em against their own kind. And I figured out why, too.

"It's cause you're _scared._

"Scared of what it would mean if every kid with a power like mine could grow up big 'n strong; scared of what it would mean for 'em if humanity could stand proud and fly free of all the damn puppeteering your kind have been doing all this time.

"Well, this is America. We fought _hard_ for our freedom, and we'll _keep_ fighting for it."

The hammers on the guns were pulled back with dual _clicks_ \- I hadn't bothered noting their unready state as an opportunity before, not with how fast the gunman was.

"So, 'fore I send you back to whatever hell you critters are hauling yourselves out of these days, do you have any last words?"

My grin widened. "Two minutes."

The gunman blinked. "What?"

"Two minutes and forty-seven seconds." I elaborated. "That's how long we've been standing here talking.

"Now, I don't know anything about your Sacred Gear - but with what I know of them in general, I'm willing to bet that there's a limit to how far you can reverse your own time. And from that kick I landed earlier, I know there's a cooldown period - probably as long as the time you've wound back."

From the grimace on the gunman's face, I took it that I was correct.

"So that means that right here, right now, it's just us. No causality-dodge, no cover, no ambush." I brought my revolvers up, levelling them at the gunman; he didn't make to stop me.

Neither of us moved for a long moment, before the gunman spoke again. "My name's Maverick."

I blinked. "Maverick?"

"Yup. Just Maverick."

I shrugged internally. "I'm Drew."

Maverick blinked. "Shit, seriously? I thought all you Angel-types had fancy bible names."

I allowed a wry smirk to cross my visage. "Yeah, well, I'm not a very good Fallen, if I'm honest."

"...I think I can see that." Maverick decided. "So, just you an' me, huh?"

I nodded.

"Well then...I suppose I'd better bring my A-game."

' _...wait, what?'_

With what appeared to be a series of highly practiced motions, Maverick had the revolvers open and the ammo in the air in under half a second. Before the bullets had begun to fall he had reloaded from one of his pouches, and by the time he caught the following ammo the revolvers were closed once more and aimed at me the instant the ejected rounds had been tucked into a pouch.

I stared. "Just how fucking much do you do this?"

Maverick grinned. "Don'tcha know son? American gunslingers're the best in the world!"

For a moment, I saw the man overlayed with the image of another well-built blond; then I saw his trigger-fingers moving, and I didn't have time for rational thought.

During the day I spent with Azazel, I had fallen (no pun intended) into a mindset of pure reaction. I could never have survived if there had been processing time between data input and reaction to that input. So, I erased the delay.

That same state was what I fell into as Maverick's first shot fired, and I brought the Webley in my right hand up, took aim and fired in almost the same time it took him to pull the trigger.

Light bullet and American-manufactured round collided in mid-air - and _exploded._

Some part of my brain screamed ' _What the FUCK?!'_ at that, but the rest of me was busy replicating the feat over and over.

It was inhuman. The hand-eye coordination needed, the speed of movement, the trajectory extrapolation...it was all, frankly, monstrous.

But you didn't survive twenty-four hours with an Archangel trying to kill you without shattering a few pre-supposed limiters.

The space between us was filled with the detonations that occurred as the rounds intercepted one another, rather like a fireworks display. Between my Light bullets and Maverick's apparently explosive rounds, there was a near-constant circle of light between us that shifted back and forth as bullets got closer to one of us than the other.

I snatched glances at Maverick's guns when I could, and I quickly noticed the pattern.

' _Every five rounds per gun, there's a shudder and he narrows his eyes for a moment. He's using his Sacred Gear to return those bullets to the point in time where they hadn't been fired yet, and by the time the cylinder cycles over the cooldown has reset so he can just keep doing it.'_

That left him with effectively infinite ammunition; so long as he still had magical energy he could keep firing - just like me.

A stalemate - but I didn't want to take a gamble on which of us would fall over first in a battle of attrition, or take a risk on not being able to keep up my point-defense for that long.

So, in my low-order-thinking state, I started walking forward.

With each step, my firing solution had to become faster and faster, the trajectories of my shots had to account for my own motion as well as the other rounds', and the difficulty effectively ramped itself up a whole new level.

We had been about ten to twelve paces away from one another when the gunfight started. I had only crossed half that distance when I intuitively knew that if I tried to get any closer, I wouldn't be able to keep up any longer.

I gritted my teeth, eyes darting around for a solution - then hatched one.

It was a stupid idea - a _really_ stupid idea. But I wasn't going to get a better one, so I jumped on it.

I abruptly switched the target of my left-hand revolver. Instead of destroying the round headed for my left shoulder, I instead fired directly at the barrel of the revolver in Maverick's left hand, effectively ruining the gun in return for the shot I then took to the shoulder.

It _burned_ \- oh by all that's holy it _burned._ But I was building up quite the pain tolerance even when I couldn't shut it out, and I forced myself to move through the sensation as I took advantage of the opening.

As I crossed the remaining distance, managing to go _under_ the shot from the right-hand gun by throwing myself into a forward roll, I came up in time to see the ruined gun repair itself in an instant - returning to brand new as if it had never been damaged.

But it had been damaged long enough.

I rose fast, bringing the Webleys up and around in a pistol-whip for the ages, aiming for an incapacitation shot to the side of the head and praying Maverick's possession of a Sacred Gear would stop any potential damage-

Only to find myself missing completely as he leaned back underneath the strike, flipping back on his hands and kicking me in the chin as he went.

I went over backwards, hitting the grass before rolling sideways and getting to my feet again, and when I looked back I found that Maverick had holstered his revolvers. "We here in the US like our guns," he told me, "but we've been makin' knives for a whole helluva lot longer."

He reached to the handles on his waist, drawing the blades out. "CO010 Combat Ready Military Fighter Knives." He declared. "American-made for American use." His left arm came up in front of his face like a fleshy shield, one knife held in a reverse grip; the other was held facing forward at his side. "C'mon, boy; let's see what you're made of!"

The Webleys swirled in my hands and reformed, the grips becoming hilts in my hands while the cylindrical portion of the newly-made weapons extended up the inside of my arms at ninety-degrees.

I spun the tonfa a few times, grateful that my pseudo-biology meant a hole in my shoulder had very little impact on my fighting ability. The weapons were the one-handed extension of my choice to fight with a staff rather than a spear, and I'd ingrained a few instincts with them during my time with Azazel.

Test complete, I raised both in front of my face with the actual striking surface facing outward. Then I considered for a moment, before shrugging internally and deciding I'd probably never get the chance to say this again without someone overhearing I'd rather not. "You've disturbed the peace." I informed Maverick, bending my knees. " _Kamikorosu."_

Then I launched myself toward Maverick and the fight was back on.

His right hand came forward like a snake, going for a stomach-shot below the guard of my tonfa - but a moment's thought caused the weapon to extend, intercepting the blow and turning it aside as I went for a swipe with my right tonfa.

That hit was absorbed by a suddenly raised leg, which interposed itself between the weapon and Maverick's ribs in time to act as a shield. A hop from the other leg let Maverick reposition to my left using the force of my strike, where he once more launched a stab with his right hand - this time though, his left hand scythed out, the blade of the knife within glinting.

I met the cut with my now-skyward left-hand tonfa while my right hand rotated the tonfa it held and stabbed out at my opponent's incoming wrist.

It ended up passing right through the space where the wrist _should_ have been, and less than a second later the errant blade passed through my out-positioned guard and stabbed into where a human's kidney would be.

 _There_ was an organ I wouldn't be missing so dearly any more.

Still, having several inches of metal forcibly inserted into me rather counted as bad time - and I made this known by forcibly knocking Maverick's left arm away with a blow to the inside of his elbow using my right-hand tonfa before using my now-free left hand to slam a blow home on American's ribs.

We broke apart, me grimacing at the stain growing on my plain maroon shirt and Maverick's eyes narrowing as he took deep breaths.

We stared at one another for a moment, then Maverick came back in, this time striking at my stomach and throat simultaneously. I held out my left tonfa in front of me, extending it in both directions to block both knives - but wasn't too surprised when Maverick's position suddenly changed to earlier in the step before impact, where his strike-zones changed to my lower left side and my right shoulder.

I curled my shoulder in before whipping it back out again as the knife came in, knocking it aside and giving me the chance to shoot a blow forward while Maverick's left side was open. Meanwhile, I swept my left tonfa across my body by spinning the handle, sparing myself another puncture wound.

Maverick moved back with the blow I dealt him, diffusing some of the force, but when I went to press the attack he suddenly spun into a sweeping kick, knocking my legs out from under me.

The tonfa in my left hand vanished as I extended that limb to catch myself, and I was halfway through using that point of support to turn a cartwheel when Maverick finished his spinning turn and came up with one of his revolvers in hand.

My entire world narrowed to the mouth of the gun, and my cartwheel became a spin around the axis of my arm as the first two shots came in.

After that he had corrected his aim, so with the strength born of being a Fallen Angel I pushed myself several feet into the air with just the flexing of the arm I had on the ground, thereby avoiding the next two rounds.

Then I was hung in the air, caught in the instant between 'up' and 'down', easy pickings for even a half-decent marksman…

And as he brought up his gun, it was on the exact same line as the Webley construct that appeared in my right hand.

There was the detonation of HEI round and Light bullet between us, and then I was back on the ground and flipping backwards to open distance. I came to a stop at around the same twelve-step distance away from Maverick as I had been at the start of our gunfight, and remained there as the gunman regained his feet.

"Phew…" He panted, blowing out a whistle. "Gotta admit, you've got a better handle on the whole 'hand to hand' thing than the others. None of 'em seemed to have a plan beyond 'stick the weak human with the pointy glowstick'."

I would have chuckled, if he wasn't referencing times when members of the organisation I was currently acting on the behalf of tried to murder him - and with that reaction, I came to a realisation.

I...didn't really want to fight any more. Hell, I hadn't particularly wanted to fight in the first place. ' _Or...is that really true?'_

I could have flown away. When I ran up the stairs in the tower, I could have just flown out one of the windows on the opposite side from Maverick and gone to the extraction point, leaving him be.

But I hadn't.

I hadn't, just like I hadn't hesitated when I effectively gave Mittelt a death-threat. Just like I had taken this mission because I wanted to vent my frustrations with violence. Just like I was doing exactly that - despite having no reason at all to fight, I was still here, still risking my own life and the life of the man in front of me.

' _I didn't used to be like this. I'm_ sure _I didn't.'_ I looked at my hands - at the Webley construct I was still holding aimed at Maverick. ' _What...happened?'_

The Grigori expected that someday I would take off my humanity like a suit and cast it aside as clothing I'd outgrown. And that idea was still abhorrent to me…

But I couldn't deny that it seemed to have started already.

"Oh man...there's a look I haven't seen in a while."

I looked up sharply as Maverick spoke, finding him wearing a sombre expression but with a wry grin. "Last time I saw a face like that, I'd just been jumped by a buncha Devils - King tracked me by my Gear, wanted me for his Peerage, you know how that song and dance goes."

The barrel of my revolver trembled. ' _Huh - that's funny...I've not been anything less than perfectly steady since I died…'_

"Well, he orders them all to attack - but there's this one kid, probably not even able to grow a full beard yet, who hangs back.

"I kept seein' 'im as the fight went on; he never joined in, even when his King got mad and smacked him pretty good.

"So when I finished wiping the floor with the critters and their winged rodent of a leader, I sat down with the kid, and I asked 'im how come he didn't get on in the action and try to take me out. Know what he told me?

"'Because even if I'm a Devil now, no matter how much I want to fight, I don't want to hurt someone who doesn't deserve it.'"

Maverick gestured to me. "That was his expression during that fight; the face of someone who's got a little voice in the back of their head that's always eggin' 'em on, an urge to break and tear and fight fight _fight!_

"But more than that - it's the face of someone who's human enough to say 'HELL NO!'"

The yell startled me a bit, and Maverick seemed to grin a bit wider. "You've got the wings an' the magic, and you've even got the know-how...but under those feathers I reckon there's someone quite a bit like me."

Those words sank right past my brain with all the force of a bunker-buster. Through the surface thoughts, through the conflict, through all the emotional chaos that I'd been keeping a lid on since I woke up in the Grigori, and right to the very core of me - to place where the existences of a Fallen Angel and a Human mixed like oil and water, rejecting one another constantly for all they appeared as one whole.

Those words reached that maelstrom - and something _clicked._

 _ **I AM THE SUN IN THE STARRY SKY**_

 _ **WITH A BODY OF ETERNITY, AND A HEART OF CHANGE**_

A pause.

"What kinda anime bullshit is th-"

A new sun was born, and the world turned white and gold.

* * *

A dimension away, a being older than the stars watched as the feathers he had been scanning suddenly began to glow like the sun and lengthened, while something that wasn't exactly music but didn't quite fall into any other category drifted from their surfaces.

Azazel blinked. "What...was _that?"_

* * *

A dimension further away than the Grigori, a human figure with golden hair and eyes of blue sky blinked as he felt the system he had been left to manage...for lack of a better term, _shiver._

"Michael?" A voice that transcended all earthly considerations of the word and segued into the concept of Music queried. "Is everything alright?"

The Archangel Michael shook his head to clear it. "Yes, Gabriel."

"Alright." The voice/song replied. "Do come to supper soon won't you? Father's system will hold itself together if you leave it alone for a few minutes."

Michael slumped slightly, his eyes falling upon a creation that would have required several millennia of existence, an understanding of fundamental concepts and a Light element of the Sixth Level to even _see._ "Sometimes, I wonder…" He whispered to himself.

* * *

There weren't words that could describe the experience I underwent when I internalised Maverick's words. Not in any language, human or supernatural, Holy or Unholy. I couldn't have drawn a picture to convey it, nor would music have served. It was an experience that simultaneously went beyond my own comprehension while expanding my comprehension to match, leaving me only partially cognisant of just what had occurred.

The closest analogy was, perhaps, as if I had been existing as only the corner of a puzzle - but that a new piece had just been returned to me, making me... _greater._

The words that had rolled off my tongue as if by divine mandate, words I'd never even thought before but that felt like they had been waiting my entire life to be spoken, resonated in my mind like song. Like a mantra, endlessly circling and reinforcing itself. They were _mine_ and in some way I couldn't quite understand they _were_ me.

All of my focus and all my attention was fully drawn by the frankly _religious_ experience, so I didn't even notice time was passing until Maverick's southern drawl spoke up. "Well _there's_ somethin' you don't see every day."

I opened my eyes, finding myself looking at a seriously confused-looking Maverick. "I mean seriously, what the hell?" He asked, looking at something above and behind me.

I turned to look over my own shoulder…

And I gaped.

Eyes wide, mouth open, I stared at the _new pair of wings I had grown._

"That...shouldn't be possible." I whispered to myself, barely even cognisant of raising my arm to poke at one of the new appendages until I felt it - both in my finger and in my new wing. "That should _not_ be possible."

"Just what the hell are you, anyway?" Maverick demanded, and I turned to face him - there was the faintest echo of _something_ on my tongue, like there should be something there that I was missing…

But I lost the sensation a moment later and so continued on. "...I'm me." I told him, drawing a roll of the eyes before I continued. "I'm Drew, a teenager who died and ended up becoming the first true hybrid of Human and Fallen Angel. I'm the only one of my kind, a freak of nature that most of this planet will want to kill for one part of me or another.

"And I guess...I'm still human enough to say 'Hell no.'"

Maverick stared at me for a few moments, his expression inscrutable. "...So even the Fallen Angels are poachin' humans now."

I opened my mouth to correct him, but Maverick just kept rolling on. "Well Drew, let me make a proper introduction.

"I'm Maverick - _just_ Maverick - the wielder of the Sacred Gear Kronos Trigger. I'm a born-and-bred American - part of the greatest nation on Earth! And my dream is to one day see humanity standin' on their own!

"But I've got one more goal. 'Cause after seein' that kid, and hearin' about all the reincarnated Devils out there, I made a promise to myself."

As he spoke, Maverick had been growing louder and louder, working himself up until he almost seemed to be looming over me despite the distance between us. Now, he pointed one hand directly at me and _shouted._ "I'M GOING TO REVERSE THE EVIL PIECES SYSTEM! ONE DAY, I'LL GIVE EVERY REINCARNATED DEVIL THE CHANCE TO BE HUMAN AGAIN!"

His clenched fist stabbed forward, pointer finger extended toward me, and I almost felt a phantom tap on my chest. "Now COME ON! Show me if you're really human at heart, or if I should just give up on Fallen Angels as a whole species of arrogant morons!"

I blinked. "But I...really don't want to fight any more. I mean, I just got another pair of wings and the whole spiritual discovery kinda killed my ang-"

I somehow managed to form a Light-staff in my hands quickly enough that I could spin it and deflect the explosive shot fired at me. "What the hell man?!"

Three more came in quick succession, and I blocked each on the construct. "Seriously, quit it! I don't want to fight you!"

There was a pause - then the six remaining rounds in his revolvers soared forth, and I instinctively spun around, reinforcing one of my new wings and sweeping it across the bullets' flight-path.

They detonated, and I felt something from it - but not much, all things considered.

I unfurled my wing, giving Maverick a _look._ "Well, if that's how you want to play things…"

My four wings pulled on the air like an arm would pull on a desk, slingshotting me forward and into Maverick's personal space. "LET'S PLAY!"

His guard was only halfway-formed when my staff swung forward, folding him a bit around it and launching the gunman into a bouncing path across the grass.

I followed, running hard and finding it surprisingly easy to keep Maverick's entire body in focus at once. That ease let me pick up on the blur of him bringing his revolvers up, and I angled my lower wings to launch me skywards over the incoming bullets - then re-angled my upper wings to send me back _down_ again, a feathered missile that outsped Maverick's ability to re-aim.

He rolled out of the way of my knees, which blew a crater out of the ground when they impacted, and once again emptied his revolvers at me - but both my left-hand wings extended to shield me, taking the hits with their new durability and the newly-potent Light I layered them with.

Keeping my wings between myself and Maverick, I got up and started to charge, my wings serving as all the shield I needed to weather the rain of lead and fire he sent my way. Behind the feathers, I opened my right hand, a moment's concentration forming a new construct there.

There was a quiet _click_ as the twelve-gauge double-barrelled Remington spun around my hand, and I pointed it back the way I'd come. ' _Any second now…'_

I was expecting Maverick to rewind his personal time-stream until he was lying behind me once again, thereby taking him around my feathery shield; so I prepared the shotgun with imagined 'soft' rounds that would pack a wallop but hopefully not shred the man like paper.

But for the umpteenth time that night, the American got the drop on me. This time, when there was a momentary pause in his firing.

I waited for him to re-appear behind me, sure he must have used his Sacred Gear…

And instead found myself letting out a shocked yell as something blew through _both_ of my Light-reinforced wings, scattering shards of magic and a spray of ichor into the night.

Two more holes appeared in the same way before I threw all my concentration into constructing the thickest, strongest wall I could imagine in front of me, drawing on my Light element as hard as I could.

The multi-foot glowing construct that appeared gave a crystalline scream as spiderweb cracks spread over its face, the result of its blocking the other incoming rounds - but it held, and gave me the time to pull in my wings, the left two of which had been once more rendered useless.

"What in the _fuck_ was that?!" I demanded as I continued to concentrate on the wall, starting to extend it around myself as a kind of fort.

".500 calibre full-metal jacket slugs!" Maverick declared, cocking his revolvers obnoxiously loudly. "These babies'll put a hole in damn near anything on the planet, movin' or not!"

"How do you even _have_ something like that?!"

"I bought 'em off the internet!"

I resisted the urge to smack my head on the glowing golden wall I had erected around myself to buy time for thinking. "Your country has some seriously fucked-up ideas, you know that?! Just what the hell are people going to kill with those things?!"

"In my experience? Whatever they shoot at!"

' _...Touché._

' _Okay dammit, my wings can't hold up to that, and I'm not going to bet any of the rest of me can even with the boost. The wall can hold up okay, but I have to focus too hard on it to cart it around, so it's...out...'_

I blinked. ' _...There's no way this'll work.'_

I told myself that, because I was sure Azazel would have done _something_ like this already if it was possible, and Shemhazai would never have let him forget it.

But still...you'd never know unless you tried.

So I closed my eyes, gathered my Light element, pressed my hands together…

And I _imagined._

" **Susanoo!"**

* * *

It started at the glowing wall-construct.

The craters and cracks smoothed out and disappeared, while the appearance of bricks vanished as the construct rounded itself.

It quickly closed over the open top, creating an enclosed space like a bubble which grew larger and took on new textures, becoming similar to plate armour.

Arms sprouted near the top while an armoured helm extended from the peak of the now-formed torso, a bo staff that was closer in size and girth to a redwood tree held between the hands as they formed.

Then, when the upper body was complete, the entire assembly began to rise as the bottom of the torso extruded legs, plate-armoured like the rest of the body, that carried the hybrid within the torso into the sky.

Within a minute, there stood a plate-armoured warrior with a bo-staff, its head at the level of a five-storey building, staring down at the blond human it faced.

Inside the torso, Drew Campbell opened his eyes - and both he and Maverick shared much the same thought at much the same time.

' _That is_ such BULLSHIT _.'_

* * *

I stared out at the world from within the golden body I had made, feeling the effort of both creating and holding together the armoured warrior, but also knowing that I possessed a greater knowledge and control of my construct than I did of my own body.

'I' spun the bo in 'my' right hand, generating a wind that stripped the leaves and branches from trees at the base's perimeter, then held it firm and focussed on Maverick.

The American was looking up at me with a kind of incredulous expression, and I found that despite the distance and Light separating us I could still hear him speak.

"How the _fuck?"_

I gave him a toothy smirk. " **Fuck you, that's how."**

The response I got to that was a hail of bullets that cratered and cracked the Light armour in front of me - but it held, the same thickness and toughness that had been presented in the original wall having remained true for the warrior I had extrapolated from it.

" **Now** _ **that**_ **was uncalled for."**

'I' stepped forward, shaking the ground in doing so as the usual 'weightlessness' of my Light constructs was being overridden by my belief that a plate-armoured warrior five-storeys tall should weigh several metric fuck-tons, and swung 'my' bo staff.

'I' deliberately pulled the strike, making sure it wouldn't connect with the American and thus paint him over a significant portion of the surrounding area - but the wind that resulted from the weapon's passage was a blow all its own, lifting Maverick from his feet and flipping him backwards from the force.

He got back to his feet quickly, starting to strafe sideways and keep firing at me - but each shot was caught as its predecessors had been, and 'I' retaliated by spinning the bo once and then plunging it into the ground.

The resulting upheaval of the earth took the feet out from under the gunman, leaving him open for 'me' to kick a skyward-bound chunk of earth in his direction.

" **I'd prefer for you to eat shit,"** I mused as he looked up just in time for the somewhat-disassociated cloud of dirt particles, plant-life and sediment to hit him head-on, " **but then again this is America; you've probably done that every day of your life."**

Maverick spat out the dirt that had gotten in his mouth, glaring up at me. "Now I _know_ you didn't just diss my home-cooking."

" **That would imply I consider the stuff you eat 'cooking' - or 'food', for that matter."**

With my elevation to a Second Level Fallen Angel had come an increase in my visual acuity; so, I was able to see the way Maverick's expression went completely flat. "Alright, now you've gone an' made it _personal."_

In a motion I could just barely track now, the American switched his ammo once more, levelling his revolvers at me. "This is for my momma's cookin' asshole!"

When he fired this time, the effect on my construct wasn't quite the same.

Instead of just blasting craters in the armour, _this_ round seemed to hit and then shatter, spreading the damage over a wider area and resulting in myriad cracks that began to distort my view.

As the volley continued and started digging deeper into the Light, I could see the metal shards spreading wider within the construct and forming oddly fractal patterns like some kind of galactic map.

And just like space, exposure would be deadly.

'I' raised 'my' left arm to cover myself, taking the moment's reprieve to erase the damage done to 'my' torso before turning the shielding arm into a backhanded strike, forcing Maverick to hunker down or get blown away again.

That in turn left him vulnerable to 'my' stamping on the ground near him, the transferred force knocking Maverick into the air and leaving him set up for 'me' to swing the bo-staff through the space just below him as hard as 'I' could.

The displacement of the air hit him like a hammer in the back, but as the vacuum left behind got filled in he was dragged into it, sending him rocketing along like he'd been thrown into a wind tunnel.

Or, like he'd just been hit with a golf club.

" **Fore!"**

The Sacred Gear user's path ended at the wall of the control tower, where he ended up going through the part of the wall weakened by his earlier bombardment - at which point the supporting walls gave in the ghost, causing the entire tower to collapse.

I stared for a moment, dumbfounded, before eloquently yelling " **SHIT!"** and running for the rubble.

'I' would be able to dig him out surely, and this was an anime universe; people would be tougher here, right? Plus, he was a Sacred Gear wielder and a tough cookie besides, he'd surely be able to survive a silly little thing like several tonnes of military-grade rubble collapsing on him.

Right?

I sincerely hoped I was right as 'I' knelt down beside the rubble, reaching forward to begin clearing it away-

And then heard a crystalline scream as something dug into the inside wrist of 'my' right hand.

" **What?!"**

"You thought I was down for the count, did ya?"

I turned to look at 'my' wrist...and found Maverick there, his right hand pointing a revolver at me while his right...was holding onto a _scythe?_

The weapon's handle was a bit longer than Maverick himself was tall, with a stretched-out reverse-S shape to it. At the head of the weapon a spike swept back and upwards from the 'back', while the blade itself protruded from the other side and extended at least a metre from the scythe with a somewhat jagged curve that matched the serration on the blade's edges.

There was some kind of gemstone set into the head of the scythe between the blade and the backswept spike, glowing an ominous red - a fitting companion to the chain which sprouted from just at the root of the blade, then wound around the scythe down to just about the end of the handle.

The blade glowed red like the gemstone while the rest of the weapon was pitch-black - it honestly looked like it was alive and glaring at me.

Even if it was so fucking edgy I thought I could feel my eyes bleeding.

"Well ya should've thought twice - 'cause there ain't no way I'm gonna die 'fore I've done what I need to!"

 _ **Well said, my wielder.**_

I blinked. " **Wait, who said that?"**

 _ **I did. Can you not see me? Or are those vaunted eyes of yours no better than a magpie's?**_

This time, I could tell that Maverick's lips definitely weren't moving - but the gemstone on his scythe pulsed with each syllable.

" **You're his Sacred Gear?"** I clarified, recalling that it was possible for Ddraig and Albion to speak through their gauntlets but not having expected it here of all places.

 _ **I am Kronos! The greatest of Titans, the Lord of Time! The father of Zeus and the bane of all Olympus! I am no mere 'Sacred Gear', you wretched excuse for a harpy; know your place!**_

' _Well he's a chatty one._

' _But for that scythe to be part of his Sacred Gear, and for the spirit inside it to have apparently awakened or become able to speak…'_

My eyes widened. " **Did you just** _ **achieve your Balance Breaker?!"**_

"Balance Breaker…" Maverick drawled, rolling the words around in his mouth as if tasting them, before grinning. "Now I reckon I like the sound of that."

 _ **Indeed.**_ Kronos agreed. _**This is the Kronos Trigger's Balance Breaker; Ελέγχου Σύμπαντος!**_

There was a moment of silence - then, Maverick spoke up. "Uh...don't suppose there's an English translation of that?"

" **Universe Control."** I replied without thinking - then blinked. " **Wait, how did I know that?"**

 _ **It seems you are less intelligent than I gave you credit for.**_ The scythe scoffed. _**Are you not even aware of your own ability to speak in tongues? 'Not a very good Fallen' indeed.**_

My eyebrow twitched. _I_ was allowed to make fun of myself, but frankly I was a little irritated at being lectured by so much mystical wood and metal.

" **Well if I'm such a bad Fallen, you'll have no trouble with this."**

Maverick blinked, and I almost thought the scythe did too - then the glowing golden fingers of 'my' hand curled inwards as 'I' bent the wrist at an angle utterly impossible for a human being, resulting in 'my' fist closing around the weapon and its wielder.

"Shit!" I could hear Maverick yelling from within. "The hell'm I supposed to do with a scythe like this dammit?!"

 _ **A scythe is a weapon both deadly and multi-faceted!**_ Kronos declared, sounding rather defensive. _**Do not degrade my mother's gift just because you lack the intellect to truly comprehend its brilliance!**_

"Well I don't know 'bout your momma, but unless you've got some kinda can-opener in ya somewhere I'm gonna stick by what I said!"

" **Do...I have to give you two a minute?"** I wondered aloud, rather bemused by the two's bickering as 'my' fist remained clenched tightly enough to prevent escape or much movement, but not so tight as to crush or cut off the air supply.

There was a moment of silence where I could barely detect the hum of Kronos speaking - then, Maverick spoke once more, and it was with the kind of confidence that made me brace myself.

"Oh, no need for that...we've got all the time in-"

A kind of insightful flash hit me in an instant, and I instinctively curled up and threw my all into reinforcing the area around me before he finished speaking.

"THE WORLD!"

There was a pause that lasted only long enough for me to perceive that it had passed - then all at once, 'my' right hand and arm came apart in a shower of sparks and slabs of Light that dispersed into the air after shattering, while several deep slashes appeared in 'my' torso.

Maverick was no longer trapped in what had been 'my' right hand, but was in fact hanging from his scythe's handle in front of me, his left hand pointing a revolver into one of the deep slashes. "You ain't the only one who can make references, boy."

Then he started firing, and in the time before 'my' left arm swept across 'my' body and forced him to retrieve his scythe and drop away, he managed to get bullet fragments as close as centimetres from my face.

I grimaced. I didn't think I had enough energy left in me to re-make 'my' arm, and I'd lost the bo when I ran to the rubble of the tower.

'I' got to 'my' feet, launching 'myself' a few steps backward (which amounted to half the length of the base) and trying to think of a new counter.

' _Okay - so he's got time-stopping to go with his other abilities now. How do I deal with this?_

' _Well, that's gotta be draining for him - so attrition would be a possibility...if not for the fact that he can almost totally breach my defenses in just one instance of his ability._

' _I can't infiltrate stopped time, since that's nothing like any kind of magic I can actually do and I'm not a Devil whose entire ability to wield magic is based on imagination alone._

' _So what can I do that will deter someone who stops time?'_

I was still wondering about that when there was a _click_ behind me, and I looked sharply over my shoulder to see that Maverick was once more hanging from his scythe as it was buried in my construct - except this time, he had dug out a crater in 'my' back with slashes, then stuffed his HE and Frag grenades into the space.

"Fire in the hole!" He declared as he freed the scythe and jumped backward, bringing his revolver up and giving me just enough time to make a rapid decision and grab a mental hold of as much of the Light element invested in the Susanoo as I could-

Then he fired, the grenades went off, and my entire world was a confused whirl of sky and land.

I manipulated the Light element I had a hold of with a speed born of panic and reactionary instinct, forming a sphere around myself that bounced upon hitting the ground, rolling madly with me inside until it dispersed with a _crash_ upon hitting a hangar wall.

I wanted little more than to just lay still and rest, but I forced myself to get back to my feet and form the construct that would be needed for me to survive.

My fingers twisted and intertwined, working with and alongside one another as I twisted, bent and wove the Light through the dexterity of a Second Level Fallen - then, when I caught sight of Maverick running toward me, scythe held in his hands, I threw my hands out to let the creation grow, closed my eyes...

And _hoped._

* * *

As Maverick ran towards the Fallen Human, as he'd designated Drew, he could see the light shining from between Drew's cupped hands.

The American saw Drew's head come up and his hands go forward, saw the light begin to grow, and he reached for the feeling that had come to him while the control tower came tumbling down.

In that moment, with tonnes of rubble bearing down on him, a massive foe that even his beloved American weaponry couldn't defeat alone waiting outside, he had never felt closer to being defeated - and that had been more than enough of a catalyst for his Balance Breaker.

Maverick refused to die. More than that - he refused to _fail_ , to _not_ achieve his dreams. He _was_ going to help raise humanity above its supernatural oppressors, and until he had he was determined that _nothing_ would stop him.

And that will to go against the world took the form of the scythe in his hands and a new ability.

He could feel time, in an abstract kind of way; could feel its flow, could feel the points where objects existed in the 'present' as the echoes of their presence in the 'past' vanished downriver. And more than just feeling it - he could _affect_ it.

Like building a dam in his mind that could, for a precious few moments, hold back the flow of time itself.

He did just that as he approached Drew, maintaining his speed as the world froze around him and eyeing the Fallen Human's latest creation.

Recognising it, he found himself grinning. An interlinked structure of glowing threads that formed a spiderweb of sorts, originating at Drew and spreading outward in a forest of magic.

The kid had apparently gone for something off the top of his head - 'cause if he'd been thinking as clearly as Maverick gave him credit for, he would have remembered just how things had gone the first time someone had tried to use that technique against a time-stopper.

"I guess you weren't all that human after all…" He noted, somewhat sadly, to the frozen man. "'Cause otherwise you'd have learned from his mistake."

And with that, he swung his scythe (and man, was there any _less_ wieldy weapon in existence? Give him some superior American engineering any day) down, prepared to make a point by shattering every single thread before the time-stop wore off-

And instead found himself suddenly blinded, as the instant his scythe broke the first thread the entire structure came apart in a flash that, even if he'd been wearing his sunglasses, would have made them about as effective as paper.

* * *

"What the damn hell?!" Was the first thing I heard after unleashing my mess of threads - a mess that had vanished completely now, leaving me perfectly able to see Maverick rolling around on the ground with his hands over his eyes, scythe discarded. "What just happened?!"

"Heh…" I sighed, pulling on the dregs of my Light element to reform the Remington. "You just fell for the same trick twice.

"People who stop time can still see, even though light should be frozen as well; so I guessed that if I set up a flash-bang construct in the shape of an Emerald Web, and you broke it, it would work just fine."

"But that's...that's…!"

"Bullshit?" I asked, spinning the weapon in my hand and cocking it. "Yeah - because you're right; the supernatural has damn good reason to fear humans. We don't follow the rules and we don't slow down; we can accomplish the impossible if we just put our minds to it, always pushing further ahead and leaving the Moonlit World to dog our heels and try to hold on to the leash.

"One of these days...I truly believe a person like you is going to break that leash entirely and let humanity run free."

"...Well said." Maverick finally spoke, laying on his back in the grass.

His vision wouldn't be coming back any time soon, and he knew it. He had no way to anticipate me doing anything, and his scythe was out of reach.

I'd won. Kind of, anyway.

"Hey kid."

"Yeah?"

"You wanna go get a burger?"

I blinked. Looked at the Remington in my hand, at the man on the floor, at the base which looked like it had been hit by a localised apocalypse.

Then I shrugged, dispersed the gun, knelt down beside the gunman and helped him to his feet. "Fuck it, why not. Know anywhere decent nearby?"

"Well, there's this little place in the next town over that I stopped at on the way here; great seats, great food, cute waitresses…"

And Maverick continued to espouse the merits of the diner and American hospitality in general as he directed me to where he had been camping near the base's perimeter, where his vision had returned enough to pack up and get us on the road in his jeep.

* * *

I had to admit - the burgers really did taste delicious.

* * *

 **(PSIness11): Maverick is such an interesting combination of things. You've got the southern american charm, the lone gunslinger vigilante, the powers of Kronos and DIO… Yet somehow Teninshigen was able to put this character on paper.**

 **Digital paper, but I suppose the point...** _ **Stands!**_

 **...Dammit, I forgot to turn on the laugh-track. Oh well.**

 **Maverick was fun to write and a laugh to even think about, but damn if he didn't seem to fit right in among the other characters in DxD. I mean, Issei Hyoudou is basically a joke taken far beyond its logical extreme, so who the hell can complain about a character who has become** _ **more**_ **than a joke? Not me.**

 **(PSIness11): All the JoJo fans will be satisfied with Maverick, as well as Percy Jackson fans… I didn't even consider having Kronos be able to speak, Teninshigen just put it there. And it worked.**

 **Well if Ddraig and Albion can do it, why not others? And just for anyone who's wondering, Maverick and Kronos will have their own character arcs going on (sometimes) in the background - and there** _ **is**_ **actually planned back-story to the Kronos Trigger. In fact, just to clear up a couple of things: No, it's not a Longinus. Yes, a Subspecies Balance Breaker will appear later. No, it can't revert other people's timelines. And finally, it does have more uses than have been showcased already...but give Maverick a break, he only had the thing for a few minutes.**

 **(PSIness11): That would be a bit broken even for DxD.**

 **Depending on how far it could go, yeah - but then again, this is a universe containing dragons fuelled by Dreams and the Infinite, as well as every god from every mythology, human mages, just about every supernatural critter imaginable, weapons capable of killing Gods, and Sirzechs 'Human-Shaped Power of Destruction' Lucifer. 'Broken' and 'OP' are** _ **very much**_ **relative here.**

 **And that should segue nicely into what I think will be one of the most eyebrow-raising parts of this chapter - Drew getting a new pair of wings.**

 **I'm gonna be honest, I'm not entirely satisfied with it; except at the same time, if I were to have Drew remain relevant throughout the entire DxD story-line while still only possessing two wings, the question would then arise of why couldn't any two-wing Fallen with a decent imagination do much the same thing.**

 **Reincarnated Devils can become more powerful and achieve new ranks; Brave Saints aren't touched on all that much in my knowledge of the story, but it's probably fair to say that they can do something similar. So, I'm just going to straight-up say that a perfect Human/Fallen hybrid has the ability to grow more powerful too.**

 **I'll not consider it spoilers to say that this will continue on to its ultimate conclusion of Drew reaching the level of a Twelve-Wing Fallen. But as the trade-off, it's going to be a long time coming, and he'll never be at the right power level to win his battles without having to use his brain.**

 **To re-use my earlier point - if Issei Hyoudou can go from being something that a most of the characters in DxD wouldn't notice if they stepped on, to becoming strong enough to be recognised as something approaching a world power, then I'm going to say I'm justified.**

 **In my mind, no Evil Piece or Sacred Gear is a good enough replacement for human ingenuity and persistence. So even though he'll get more raw firepower as the story goes on, Drew's victories (and defeats) will only come with hard work, quick thinking, and DETERMINATION.**

 **(PSIness11): Undertale fanboy…**

 **-Rant/Justification over. Let's get on to the** **Reviews!**

 **-Mzr90, Ch. 2 - Giving a human being access to a Fallen's magic is basically like giving them a Holy Lantern Ring; something that can be incredibly useful in the right hands. And don't worry, I'll be working on Spheres now that this is posted.**

 **(PSIness11): I should really work on speeding...**

 **-mslmob12, Ch. 2 - Yes, I'm still doing Music; it's next on my update...eh...let's call it a 'schedule'.**

 **-Blacksword Zero, Ch. 1 - Glad you think so.**

 **-Robynhood13, Ch. 2 - You're not far wrong.**

 **-Lazymanjones96, Ch. 1 - Ask and thou shalt receive.**

 **-The Ultimate Balance Chaos, Ch. 2 - There's no better opening to a training session than someone yelling 'DODGE!' before trying to kill you.**

 **(PSIness11): That's how our writing sessions go, I yell "WRITE!", and he writes. I on the other hand, do jack shit and eat.**

 **-Naruto-Uzu-Uchiha, Ch. 2 - Congratulations, you've earned yourself a cookie :) And yes, in my mind, Fallen Angels' thought processes are basically the same as the average porno plot (my opinion of them doesn't rate very highly). This is a pretty good example of the character progression that's going to happen, though such advances will be fairly far-between; and Drew is going to get stronger, but I never want him to be in a position where he can win without having to think about it. 'Cause that's just not fun to write.**

 **-RevansStories, Ch. 2 - Well, Raynare's** _ **well**_ **out. Gabriel? Michael would turn Drew into a faint scorch-mark on the floor. And Penueme...I think she turned up in one side-story or something? I'll have to look into her.**

 **-RadioPoisoning, Ch. 2 - Just because it's necessary for him to remain relevant in the plot, Drew will eventually become a powerhouse by DxD standards - but only ever just in time for that boost to effectively only keep his head above water, leaving ingenuity to win him his battles. And also, in the words of Jaune Arc: "Ah, great. Where am I supposed to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?"**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Thanks for the support! :)**

 **-Greyjedi449t, Ch. 2 - Hope you enjoyed it ;)**

 **-'shadow', Ch. 2 - I'm glad to hear it :)**

 **-Blades of Fury, Ch. 2 - Well, Azazel finds them fascinating. Baraqiel had a kid with one. And...Shemhazai probably gets his opinion from Azazel? … Wow. Beyond that I don't think any of the Fallen named in the series have definitively stated positive views of humanity.**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Well, you need wait no longer!**

 **-xanothos, Ch. 2 - I hope this was worth the wait :)**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Well now you don't need to wait any more :)**

 **-'Ibn', Ch. 2 - Oh, if you thought it was escalating quickly before… Anyway, yeah, Drew is going to be imagining his way out of a lot of his problems - a spear isn't exactly a swiss-army knife as far as uses go. And yeah, he needed some R &R - but so far, the universe is rather determined that he won't get any.**

 **-'Rip', Ch. 2 - Oh, now I'm curious; how were you expecting me to portray the Fallen who pretended to be Issei's girlfriend before killing him, kidnapped and held Asia hostage, killed her and stole her Sacred Gear, then claimed it was all for Azazel and got herself killed? (No, seriously, I actually want to know - it might give me ideas for the story).**

 **End of Reviews**

 **Well, this brings an end to the pre-written parts of this story; I'll be back to working on Music of the Spheres now, but I might end up writing parts of this in-between sessions of that. And maybe I'll even write more of Press-Ganging at the same time; because** _ **why not.**_

 **(PSIness11): Press-Ganging… Haha yeah. The story we write when we want to procrastinate.**

 **See ya next time.**

 **[{Ness's Corner}]**

 **He's just about ready to keel over, give him a while.**


	4. The Path Unbeaten, The Ass Well-Kicked

A few degrees to the more obscure side of the middle of nowhere, there was a diner. It stood as the only building of any kind for miles around, glowing in the dark at the side of a road. Not a main road, nor a country track...it was just a twisty line of asphalt from A to B.

In truth, there was truly nothing particularly interesting about _anything_ in the area. Except, perhaps, for the three figures seated at the diner's counter.

One was obviously taller than the other, even when they were both sitting down, with the kind of physique usually attributed to Greek statues. This man had an explosion of spiky, sandy-blond hair, and wore badly tattered, mud-caked military clothing as well as enough firepower to level a significant part of a military base.

The shorter of the two had wavy black hair and a slimmer build which nonetheless had an unmistakable strength. His clothes, consisting of jeans, heavy boots and a maroon shirt, showed the signs of heavy use in recent times. The shirt was darkened in several places with what looked like blood, particularly around the stab-wounds, while there were cuts and abrasions all over the visible fabric.

The third figure was an eldritch scythe with a soft glowing crystal at its head, which was leaned back against a stool so its blade was just about level with the others' heads. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered about this, even when the gem pulsed and a powerful voice echoed forth from it.

" **You are certain that these…'burgers'...are edible?"**

The blond looked over from where he was leaning over a considerable amount of fruit, vegetable and meat stuffed precariously between two parts of a bun. "Shut yer trap, Kronos. This is damn fine American cuisine right here."

Beside him, the other male grunted. "It's no Aberdeen Angus, but it's...well, it's not shit."

"Now son, do we have to pick up where we left off our _last_ food-based discussion?"

"With me kicking your ass?" The brunet inquired, raising an eyebrow, before shaking his head. "And stop calling me 'son', will you? It's…" He trailed off, looking at something well beyond the explosion of food groups on his plate, and there was silence for a moment.

The American paused in reaching for the scythe at his right-hand side, casting an appraising look at the Fallen Angel on his other side. "Alright then, if that's the way you want it ducky."

The newly-christened member of the trio snorted. "Ducky, huh? Fitting name for a Scotsman in America…" He looked down at himself. "Though I think I'm on the wrong side of the operating table."

The blond grunted, taking another bite of his burger. "Maybe, maybe. When d'you reckon the cops'll be here?"

The Fallen glanced over his shoulder and out of the diner's window, checking the position of the moon. "Well, assuming they actually got dispatched at all, I'd say it'll take them exactly as long as whoever the Grigori sends to try and clean up after us."

" **So then, the Scapegoat's life-raft of a Faction hasn't gone completely under yet."** Kronos noted. **"I have to give the bastard credit for sitting on that powder keg this long, at least."**

"I think Azazel's just been drawing all the crazy into himself for the past few thousand years." Drew Campbell sighed, resisting the urge to plant his face in his burger and just pass out. "The bastard's gone so far around the bend he almost looks like he's got his head on straight."

"So you've met the head of the coop?" 'Just' Maverick asked, getting a nod from Drew.

"Yeah. When something like me drops out of thin air into his house he gets curious, you know?" The Fallen shuddered. "I got lucky. _Really_ lucky. He might be about as sane as a bag of cats, but he's not all that bad a guy. If I'd landed in some other part of the Underworld... _well…_ "

There was a silence with an undertone of angry relief, during which Drew examined the mess on his plate that he'd absent-mindedly deconstructed while he was speaking. He eventually decided that re-ordering the ingredients was hardly going to make it taste any different, then swept a hand over the plate and extruded golden light which gathered its contents together into a vaguely cohesive lump.

A few seconds' concentration later that lump was much smaller, and was tossed whole into the Fallen's mouth. The chewing persisted for a few seconds until the mass was swallowed, followed quickly by most of a glass of water. "It feels really weird eating without a digestive tract." Drew noted absently.

Maverick raised an eyebrow. "Just what the hell're you made of, anyway?"

"The crushed hopes and dreams of children everywhere." Drew deadpanned, before shaking his head. "Mostly I think I'm made of magic and sheer willpower. Maybe there's something else in the mix, but hell if I can tell you what it is."

"But you still bleed." The American noted, and Drew nodded.

"Yeah. Azazel told me it's called Ichor."

" **The Scapegoat always was a know-it-all."** Kronos grumbled. **"Even** _ **before**_ **he began his philandering ways and his wings turned to coal."** There was a sense of attention re-orienting. **"My wielder, there are a great deal of beings in the world which do not have primarily physical forms but, in fact, assemble such bodies from magic itself…"**

Drew tuned out the ensuing explanation, since he already knew what Kronos was talking about. Instead, he eyed the doors into the kitchen, where the diner's staff were currently huddled together with all the knives they could get their hands on and waiting for the police to arrive.

The trio's entrance had resulted in a general stampede for the door by all the time's customers. Not surprisingly, really, considering they both looked like they had walked out of a war-zone. That wasn't very surprising either, since they actually had.

The staff themselves had very, _very_ stiffly taken the two orders for burgers, then presented the food a few minutes later - probably having been advised by the police to go along with the two crazy people's demands until backup arrived. A rather smart decision, really. Since it got the burgers on the counter in any case, Drew found himself not particularly worried about the fact that they were keeping themselves out of mischief.

Now if they'd tried to throw them out or do anything else, _that_ might have snapped him out of the fatigue and leftover nirvana he was currently experiencing and right back into bloodlusting wrath. But, to the greater good of all involved, they were being very sensible people with functional survival instincts.

Drew wondered if he should be jealous of that.

"So _basically,_ " Maverick mused, "you're saying that most supernaturals are just people-shaped bags of mystical goop."

" **...No."** Kronos declared. **"No, that is** _ **not at all**_ **what I just explained to you. My wielder, are you certain that your brain is unharmed after the confrontation?"**

Maverick glowered at the weapon, adjusting his sunglasses. He hadn't taken them off since his vision had returned in the aftermath of Drew's super-flashbang, since whenever he did he just hurt his eyes. "My brain is just fine, thank you very much. But if you're just gonna mouth off, I might as well put you back where you came from."

There was a pause. "Uh...how do I do that, again?"

The scythe seemed to sag slightly as a sigh emanated from the glowing jewel. **"This weapon is a manifestation of the Kronos Trigger's Balance Breaker. To dismiss it, you merely need to deactivate your Sacred Gear."**

A few seconds later, the scythe glowed with a malevolent crimson light before vanishing into thin air.

Maverick nodded to himself. Then he suddenly blanched. "Oh God, I can still hear him!"

Drew snickered. "Yeah, that's about right. Now that you've woken him up you're stuck with him."

"Aw hell."

* * *

I chuckled again as Maverick's face fell, picking up my glass of water and swirling it around. "You might be thankful for having another point of view hanging around your skull one day." I commented, drawing a derisive snort from Maverick.

"If you say so. 'Course, I doubt you'd be sayin' the same thing if he was in _your_ head."

I considered that, and decided that Maverick wasn't exactly wrong. After all, if I had a Sacred of any kind - let alone one that could control personal timelines - I _would_ be say something else. Probably along the lines of 'MUHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA!'

"I'll give you that." I said aloud. "Still, is it really all that bad?"

Maverick considered, then shrugged. "Eh, I can block him out if it gets _real_ annoying."

Something _pinged_ on the edge of my recently-expanded senses, and I sighed into my water. "Speaking of annoying, please don't start a repeat of that little song-and-dance from back at the base, will you? I have enough problems with the Grigori without you blowing holes in the mooks."

Maverick sighed. "I won't. But _only_ cause it's _you_ asking, got it? You might be worth respecting, but they're all just scavenging crows as far as I'm concerned."

I grinned, clapping a hand down on the other man's shoulder. Something which took a bit of effort, considering he had a few inches on me even when we were sitting down. Seriously, he was built like a brick outhouse...or an early-generation Joestar. "Well that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

"Ah, knock it off." The gunslinger grunted, shrugging off my hand and returning the favour with a punch to my shoulder. It was probably meant to be a friendly gesture, but actually caused me to topple sideways, stool and all.

I groaned for a moment before dragging myself to my feet, steadying the stool and sitting down again as I tried to gather what was left of my dignity. On the bright side, getting water all over my clothes had probably just improved their quality if anything. _'I'm gonna have to ask about learning Conjuration if I'm gonna go through outfits like this.'_

The door to the diner opened, allowing a group of five Fallen to enter - two men and three women. That was about right, since men were actually the minority in the Grigori. There were a lot of theories about that, but I personally believed it was just Azazel's influence again. He _was_ the kind of guy to sit outside the pearly gates and try to sweet-talk the Angels on the other side.

Well, that or tossing things at Seventh Heaven to annoy Michael. Hell, maybe he threw flirty paper aeroplanes at Gabriel and did both at once?

My eyebrow twitched. Frankly, I expected he'd probably done everything I could think of at one time or another, along with a hell of a lot of things I couldn't. That was the problem with extremely powerful, easily-bored immortals with tinkering habits.

I glanced over my shoulder to check if there was anyone I knew among the group, then closed my eyes and turned back around, dropping my forehead on to the counter-top. There was, and I couldn't quite believe I was thinking it, _not enough_ leather there.

Mostly because what wasn't covered by leather wasn't really covered by anything at all. _'Goddamn Fallen Angels and their goddamn fetish-wear.'_

I glanced sideways at Maverick, who had apparently looked over his shoulder as well. He was completely straight-faced, then let out a long sigh. Beyond that, he didn't react at all, just turning back to his burger.

"Campbell." One of the Fallen spoke up - the only one in actual clothing as I would have defined it. A gray trench-coat, with black shoes and trousers protruding from beneath it and a white cravat visible at its neck. Atop a detective-noir face was a dark gray fedora, the same colour as the gloves on his hands. "Lord Shemhazai dispatched us as the after-action team."

' _I think this guy was in the show. Hell if I can remember his name though.'_ "The base a few miles up that way," I gestured in the right direction with my thumb, "is totalled. The Stray did a real number on it first, though, so I can't really say it's all that much worse now." I redirected my hand to indicate the kitchen. "The staff for this place are through there, scared out of their wits. They'll need their memory wiped."

"And what about the _human_ beside you?" One of the women spoke up - or at least I thought so, going by the voice. A voice that sounded like its owner was sneering, at that moment.

"He's already supernaturally-aware. There's no reason to be doing _anything_ as far as he's concerned." I turned to look over my shoulder again, singling out the one who had spoken by dint of the sneer on her features and hardening my gaze. "Got it?"

The blonde, whose hair was piled up in a bun at the back of her head and was wearing what looked rather like a leather catsuit which had gone through a shredder at some point, met my gaze without flinching. "Oh? So you think you can go giving _us_ orders, huh?"

She stepped forward, with the _click_ of heels on linoleum. "You're just an interesting bug that Lord Azazel wants under his microscope." She declared. "Compared to the rest of us you're less than bacteria. So if I want to 'do something' about this…" She gave Maverick a pointed once-over, her sneer somehow becoming even deeper. " _Creature,_ then nothing you say is going to-"

"Well if nothing _he_ says is gonna matter…" Maverick's voice interjected, the man himself not having turned around. "Maybe you'll listen to me."

He set his burger down, as the woman-shaped creature behind him scoffed. "As if a Fallen Angel like me would ever heed the orders of a lower creature like-"

There was a momentary flare of monstrous red, and I could see the moment when the blonde registered something very sharp and very cold resting on the back of her neck. That 'something' was attached to a long metal shaft running down the right-hand side of her vision, where it rested on Maverick's shoulder.

"Now I'm not rightly sure just how sharp this thing is," Maverick commented, "but it did a pretty good job of slicin' up Drew here's mech-thing, so I reckon your neck'll be a piece of cake."

The Fallen trembled where she was standing, as Maverick looked at her sideways over his left shoulder. "Now my momma didn't raise me to go around killing women. But like my friend here was just telling me, your type aren't really men and women are ya? You're just differently shaped balloons full of magic stuff."

" **Even Atlas had a better understanding of basic thaumaturgy than this."** Kronos complained, causing each of the Fallen in the room to jump slightly. **"And he was** _ **made of rocks."**_

"Seriously?" I asked. "They didn't mention that in the legends."

" **Oh, he didn't start out that way. It happened over time after Zeus dropped the sky on him and walked away laughing."** The Titan of Time replied. **"However, I have always been of the opinion that Prometheus was the only nephew of mine by Iapetus who had any sense at all."**

"Yeah...your family tree weren't exactly known for their astounding intellect and sensible decision making." In the corner of my eye, I could see that our calm conversation was apparently unnerving the blonde even more, causing her to shake more quickly.

" **You know what they say."** Kronos said, giving a decent impression of a verbal shrug. **"You can dismember your father and eat your children, but you can't stop them being family."**

I paused for a moment, blinked, then turned a deadpan look on the scythe. "Your Pantheon was _seriously fucked up."_

" **It was traditional!"** The Titan defended himself, but anything more was cut off by Maverick speaking.

" _As I was saying!"_ He waited a few moments to ensure silence, then continued. "You don't really count as a woman, is what I'm thinking. I could just drag this scythe forward a foot or so and then go to bed tonight glad I've made the world a better place."

There was an eternal, frozen moment. Then, suddenly, the scythe had vanished from behind the Fallen's neck. Instead, its butt was resting on the floor against the counter's foot, with the handle itself resting against the same shoulder it had formerly been lying on so that the blade protruded over Maverick's back, allowing the gem at its head to glint menacingly at the Fallen. "But I won't. 'Cause I don't want to cause trouble for my friend here."

He patted my shoulder, almost sending me to the floor again, and when I turned to the frozen looks of shock on the various Fallen's faces, I just shrugged. "We beat the shit out of each other. We're friends now."

There were knowing nods from both of the male Fallen, who clearly understood how these things went. Meanwhile, the female standing behind Maverick finally unfroze enough to take some rapid steps backwards. I turned my gaze on her in particular. "Now, you're not going to be trying anything with my friend, are you?"

She shook her head mutely, and I nodded. "Right. In that case, you'd better get to work…" I considered. "Oh - and if I hear so much as a distressed _squeak_ from that kitchen…"

A moment's concentration brought the Light to the surface, and it structured itself into an arm which took up most of the space in the diner. The limb, skeletal to keep it as small as possible, loomed over the group of Fallen. It didn't cast a shadow - it was Light, after all - but it didn't need to. Its presence was oppressive enough on its own.

I didn't say anything else. There was no need to.

Four of the Fallen immediately set off for the kitchen in silence, congregating outside the door. A female who was wearing what looked like several veils that weren't layered well enough to seem truly solid reached into the shifting cloth of her 'clothing' and produced a small circular object.

A whispered word and a small pulse of magic later, it was pushed under the door. When nothing else happened for several seconds, the Fallen entered. I was able to catch a glimpse of several bodies that had fallen all over one another, my eyes picking out the signs of sleep. _'Must have been one of Azazel's little gadgets. I might have to ask for some of those.'_

At the same time, I'd have to ask about learning Seraphic. Maybe Runes, too - alongside Conjuration. Oh, and making pocket dimensions of various kinds was basically a party-trick here wasn't it? I _had_ to get myself a bottomless pocket of some kind. So much to learn, so much to do, so far yet to go...life was less complex as a University student.

...Well, from a certain point of view.

The trench-coat Fallen, I noted, was still standing by the door, staring at the scythe. "...The Kronos Trigger." He finally spoke, drawing a raised eyebrow from me and a pulse of red from the gem at the weapon's head. "To think, _this_ is the person within whose soul resides the greatest of the Titans…"

Maverick turned slightly in his seat, having now finished his burger. "You got a problem with me, _pal?"_

The Fallen raised his hands quickly, holding them at chest level in a 'calm down' gesture. "No, not at all...I was merely surprised. When you picture Kronos, the Father of Time, the son of Ouranos and Gaia...well, you aren't the kind of person who springs to mind as his wielder."

"Well, I _am_ his wielder." Maverick asserted. "So you can keep your opinions to yourself."

The Fallen nodded. "Of course." He turned to me. "Campbell, Lord Shemhazai said that you were to make your way to the retrieval point. He wants your report."

I sighed. "Got it."

Getting up from the counter, I found Maverick doing the same, turning to face me. "Well ducky, it's been a hell of a night." He told me, causing the fedora-wearing Fallen by the door to choke upon hearing the nickname.

"That it has." I agreed, taking the hand he extended and shaking it. "I'll drop by the area again when I can, sunny. I might bring some _proper_ burgers, too."

Maverick raised an eyebrow at the nickname, but shrugged. "Actually, I'm movin' on from here soon." He told me. "I got a lead on some kinda supernatural that's been drainin' cattle and people. I was chasing it toward the big apple when I stopped off to deal with that big mutt in the base."

"...Huh." I said, blinking. "Well then, I guess...I'll see you when I see you?"

"Well, sure." Maverick replied. "But if you really wanna sit down some time, you could just call, y'know."

I blinked again. Then facepalmed. "Right…" _'I know I didn't use my cellphone much, but forgetting about them completely? That's kind of embarrassing.'_

The gunslinger scribbled down a quick series of numbers on a napkin, then passed it to me. I tucked it away in one of my pockets, then headed for the door, exchanging a wave with Maverick as I went. "Stay safe, sunny. I hope you catch the bloodsucker."

"Best of luck to you too, ducky. You'd better keep movin' forward 'till we meet again, alright? Otherwise I'm just gonna kick your ass."

I laughed to myself as I pushed the door open. "You got it, Maverick."

The diner's door swung shut behind me, and I stared up into the starry sky for a moment, letting out a deep breath. Then, with a now-familiar twitch, my wings exploded from my back, spreading wide. I curled them forward, examining the surfaces, and decided that the holes Maverick had shot in them were healed enough to make them usable.

A crouch, a leap and a pull at the air - then I was flying, spiralling upwards in a corkscrew motion before levelling out and drifting off toward the point Shemhazai had designated on the map of the area as 'retrieval'.

It had been a long night. But with the air rushing past me, the freezing temperature easily ignored and the wind in my eyes not affecting me at all, and the moon shining down on me from above, I couldn't help but feel that things were going my way.

* * *

Dohnaseek stared at the military base from where he was floating at the head of a phalanx composing his fellow Fallen Angels. As he was doing so, the barracks gave up the ghost and collapsed completely with an upward plume of dust and debris.

He took in the leaves that had been stripped from the trees by high winds. The rubble that had once been proud buildings. The humanoid hole torn in the sheet metal of one hangar. The blood covering the pulverized remains of concrete. The badly disturbed soil that might as well have suffered an earthquake.

Oh - and the fire which was consuming the administrative building.

He tilted his fedora back and checked the position of the moon. In doing so, he came to two decisions. One was that getting this fixed before daytime rolled around was going to be a complete bitch.

The other was that it was simultaneously too late _and_ too early for this shit.

* * *

"...which means the total damages come to approximately thirty-five million US dollars." Shemhazai concluded, tapping the sheaf of papers he was holding on his desk before laying them carefully aside.

I stood in front of his desk and said nothing. Sure, Maverick and I had gotten a bit carried away, but I hadn't thought it would be _that_ bad. Hell, I didn't even know how the fire in the Admin building got started!

"I have to admit, we've never had an agent of the Grigori incur such a massive cost on their first mission." The Vice-Governor commented, steepling his fingers in front of his face. "It's actually rather impressive, come to think about it."

I kept silent.

Shemhazai sighed. "On the bright side, the memories of the diner staff were successfully erased, and we managed to place an Illusion Barrier over the base while we're repairing it. Occupancy isn't due to resume any time soon, so we should have plenty of time.

"That being said, please try and tone things down a notch the next time you go out." He requested. "We only have so many Fallen with experience as clean-up teams, and we can't afford to have too many of them deployed long-term."

"...Got it."

Shemhazai nodded. "In that case, I'll let you get back to Azazel."

I blinked. "Actually, I was going to go and practice in one of the training rooms-"

A hand clamped down on my left shoulder with all the inevitability of Death. "Nope." A deceptively cheery voice declared, while I was suddenly thankful of my inability to sweat buckets as would undoubtedly be happening if I could. "You're coming back to the infirmary so we can run a few tests."

I swallowed, turning to look over my shoulder and finding Azazel standing there, eyes closed and smiling, dressed in his doctor's coat again. "...Tests?"

"Oh, yes." He nodded, opening his eyes and revealing the franky manic gleam behind them. _"Tests."_

* * *

"Impossible. _Utterly_ impossible!" Azazel crowed for what must have been the fiftieth time, squinting at the piece of paper in front of him. I knew for a fact that his memory was perfect, and that his eyes could likely discern individual molecules from across a city, so the fact that he was re-reading the results of his tests _again_ was just a sign of his excitement.

"Well, I'm already impossible, aren't I?" I queried, resting my cheek in the palm of my hand and resting the attached arm on my knee. "A perfect hybrid that shouldn't exist, isn't that me? What's one more freaky trait?" I'd normally be a bit more caring, but frankly I had been sat on a hospital bed being poked, prodded, having lights shone on me and listening to Azazel rant and mutter for what felt like hours at this point, and the number of fucks I had to give was rapidly approaching zero.

"Oh, your sheer _existence_ is utter bullshit and I'm surprised God's System didn't collapse completely the moment you landed in our reality." The Fallen Governor admitted easily, not even seeming to particularly care about the potential cessation of both himself and _literally everything else._ "But this is...this is more than that. This is EX ranked bullshit! This is 'I love Emilia' levels of bullshit!"

I blinked. "Wait, you watched-"

"I'm in the middle of catching up with everything Japan's done since I was last there." Azazel said off-handedly. "I haven't taken a vacation there in a couple of hundred years, so I'm due a return - and Inari's priestesses are just the _best-"_

Azazel leaned backwards in his chair without looking, easily avoiding the fist-shaped Light construct which launched itself through the space his head had occupied and shattered on the wall. "But seriously though, I can't even make heads or tails of this. Whatever happened to you, your Soul-" I could hear the capital letter - "has changed on a fundamental level."

The Fallen Governor waved his hand, causing all the lights in the infirmary to die off. A second later, what looked like a projector screen appeared against the wall bearing the image of two spheres which seemed to be burning - one a light blue, the other a dark yellow.

"Soul Eater too?" I queried absently, and Azazel nodded.

"Oh, that show has given me _so_ many ideas for Artificial Sacred Gears you would _not_ believe it." He told me, before gesturing to the illusion he'd conjured. "Anyway - when you first got here, your Soul looked like this."

On the screen, the two spheres suddenly slammed together violently, as if they'd spontaneously developed opposite polarities. The result was what looked like a constant battle for dominance, as each strained to move through the other, causing them to rotate crazily and creating an impression of green from the constant spinning. "I didn't really think that much of it because I thought it was just a transition phase." He continued. "But now, I'm wondering if it wouldn't have continued like that forever if you hadn't changed like this."

I considered the screen, where the spheres were spinning against and around one another so fast I could barely follow them, even with my new eyes. "That doesn't seem like it would have been particularly good for me."

"Well, it might not have been _good_ for you, but it actually wouldn't have been all that bad either." Azazel told me. "I've seen a whole lot of Souls in my time kid, and yours was nowhere near as fucked up as some of them. That's even more true now, as a matter of fact," he clicked his fingers, "because _this_ is what your Soul looks like now."

On the screen, the two spheres suddenly stopped their crazy rotations in favour of a more sedate spin. At the same time, the point where the two met suddenly seemed to lose its solidity, as they slid _into_ one another, creating something like a 3-D Venn diagram.

"Your Human side and your Fallen side have reached a point of reconciliation." Azazel explained, sounding faintly awed. "Somehow, those two existences found a point of commonality and that turned their conflict into a joining force." He shook his head. "If something like this happened again, I'd bet they'll move even further into one another - and if the process continues for long enough, then…"

I waited for a few seconds. Then, when nothing was said, I prompted him with a "Then…?"

"I don't know." Azazel admitted.

I blinked, and the Fallen Governor shrugged, turning back to face me in his swivel-chair. "This is something I've never seen before. A complete joining could do anything from create a whole new Soul to collapse the entire thing and turn you inside out before blowing you up on a metaphysical level. I can't predict it, not even with everything I've learned."

' _Well, that's not fucking ominous or anything. Something even Azazel doesn't know…'_

I raised a hand to my face, idly clenching it into a fist. "This is a fine situation I've landed myself in and no mistake."

"Well, it could be worse." Azazel noted, and upon seeing my raised, deadpan face, he grinned. "After all, a Fallen who's managed to gain more wings? The girls are going to be _all_ over you!"

He had the common decency not to dodge this time. Even though I threw the bed I was sitting on.

The bastard didn't stop smiling either.

"Man, but I wish I knew what it was that caused this…" Azazel commented, flicking his hand and causing the badly warped metal frame of the bed, which had wrapped itself partway around his head, to straighten itself out and return to its original position.

"An over-enthusiastic cowboy crusader with timeline-manipulation powers and a Titan in a scythe." I told him, and felt gratified when I got a surprised blink out of Azazel.

"I can honestly say that's not a sentence I've ever heard before." He noted, and I shrugged.

"It's been that kind of day." I formed a small orb of Light atop my left shoulder, illuminating the infirmary in a circle around me and revealing the door. "So, are we done here?"

"Oh, almost."

Something about the way he'd said it gave me the warning to duck. Less than a second later a Light sword swung through the space where my neck had been, and I rolled the orb of Light on my shoulder down my arm to my hand to form a shield and block the next. That shield had to stretch into a full tower-shield to catch the second pass of the first blade, and I launched it at Azazel to buy me enough time for getting through the doors and out into the corridor.

I literally took off, wings pounding at the air and propelling me through the window opposite and into the open air. Azazel was right behind me, as indicated by the sudden screaming of my sixth sense. A sudden tilt backwards to transition into an upward climb took me out of the way of a rain of spears that exited the window-frame hot on my heels, and I was facing the window from a height above even the Grigori Headquarters' towers when Azazel himself drifted almost lazily out of the building and to an even height with me.

He hadn't even released his wings.

"In the interests of science," he declared, "the last test will be a practical."

I glared at him, but also felt the same stirrings I'd felt when I faced Maverick. I was more aware of them, now - I could, if I chose, disregard them. I was a human at my core, no matter what kind of magical goop might be encasing it, and I would always have the choice to act as I wanted.

But at the moment, what I really wanted was a chance to test out just what I could do now, against an opponent I had no hope of defeating. That was why the corners of my lips pulled up in a feral smile, and that was why I started drawing heavily enough on my Light element to create a faint nimbus of golden light around me. "Fair enough." I declared. "If we're gonna do a practical...I'll just have to get hands-on."

I brought my hands together almost as if in prayer, closing my eyes. The Light which flared around me grew bright enough to see even through my vein-less eyelids, solidifying around me and growing outward. It came easier, this time; less like having to create a whole new construct, and more as if there were a mould that I could fill.

But even if it had taken as long as the first time, I knew Azazel wouldn't interrupt me - he could appreciate something like this. That was why I kept my focus until 'my' feet touched the barren, ash-covered rock of the Underworld, whereupon I opened my eyes and gazed out through the torso of my Susanoo.

It was, if anything, even larger this time - standing on an eye-level with the tops of the surrounding towers, it dwarfed Azazel completely, looming over the surroundings like the god for which it was named. I could see the smile on his face easily, and I could hear him clap clearly. "Oh, that _is_ good!" He laughed. "Not the best thing to try and use in the middle of a battle - not yet, anyway - but still, bravo!"

He clapped a few more times, then tucked his hands into his pockets. "Still, I wonder how you plan to hit me? After all, if you think I can't dodge something that size I have to say I feel rather-"

There was a click. Except, that didn't really do it justice. It was to the common-or-garden click of a mouse what a clap of thunder is to someone banging the lids of two trash-cans together. It was felt in the bones and the soul, a sound so utterly authoritative that even the average primary school headmistress would be forced to give it their grudging approval.

Azazel looked down the length of a glowing, Susanoo-sized, double-barreled, twelve-gauge Remington shotgun construct and whistled. "Now _that_ ," he said, "is what _I_ call superior firepower."

There was another click - but this one was eclipsed by the utterly incomparable sound of a shotgun the size of some apartment buildings discharging both its barrels at once. The sheer sonic bombardment broke windows on the other side of the headquarters, while the actual shot itself generated a shockwave with its passage that blew all the ash in the Susanoo's immediate vicinity off the rock, leaving it bare for possibly the first time in all eternity.

Azazel didn't move - he just raised his right hand from its pocket and snapped his fingers at the approaching projectiles, moving so fast I could only just pick up on the fact that he had moved at all. I couldn't really see what happened next, but the room-sized Light pellets all seemed to suddenly stop all motion for a bare moment - then they shattered in sync, without Azazel even blinking.

"There've been enough holes blown in this place recently." He told me. "I mean, it's not like I have to pay to fix it or anything, but people get really bitchy about it." He cracked his neck. "Now…"

I stifled the urge to gulp as a mad grin spread across Azazel's face. "Let's put this toy of yours through its paces, shall we?"

* * *

I stared up at the ashy, eternally dark sky of the Underworld. The edges of my vision were obscured by the lip of the crater in which I was buried - which at least, I reflected, was free of ash. Sure, the drifts of the stuff which had formed up against the headquarters' walls after I fired the shotgun were a couple of storeys deep, but _I_ didn't have to worry about getting it off myself.

Admittedly, the rock dust I was covered in would probably be a bitch anyway, but when in Hell, I'd found it was best to focus on the silver linings.

Out of curiosity, I tried to sit up. A few seconds of frantic pain-suppression later I decided against that particular course of action, and instead relaxed into my personalised hole in the rock. I had honestly thought I might at least make Azazel give me conscious consideration during the fight, but he'd snapped 'my' Bo with one hand behind his back after I brought it down on him, then kicked me straight out of the Susanoo.

Still, silver linings - at least I knew I could pilot the Susanoo remotely now. It required me to split my attention between myself and 'I', but I _could_ do it. I'd need to get some practice with that and all the other applications I could think of for that kind of ability, but it would be a useful addition to the toolkit.

My hand-to-hand skills, however, were apparently still complete shit that I was covering for with Light manipulation and Fallen physicality. Or at least, that was what the various impressions of Azazel's fists and designer shoes that covered my body told me. _'Clothes conjuration. As soon as I get up. I'm spending way too much time shirtless lately.'_

I kept staring at the sky. _'Man, this is boring.'_

The tapping of expensive soles on rock became audible, and Azazel's face appeared in my field of view. "Yo, Drew, you still alive down there?"

With a not-inconsiderable amount of effort, I summoned the willpower to groan a couple of words. "Fuck...you…"

"Ah good, at least I didn't kick your ass hard enough to take away your vocabulary." Azazel sighed with false relief, before making a 'come hither' gesture with his hand. "Now c'mon, get out of that hole - I've got something for you."

I glared at the Fallen Governor, but I still forced myself to dig my fingers into the rock on either side of me and start leveraging myself upwards. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but once I had managed to claw myself vertical momentum kept me going up, until I managed to extend my wings over the lips of the crater and use them to lift myself out.

I stumbled when I got to ground level, but remained standing. Being on my feet made it easier to stay that way, and I looked through the haze of an exhausted Light element and general mental fatigue to Azazel, who was looking me up and down. "You look like shit."

"So still better than you, then." I replied, a bit woozily. "You try getting kicked through the closest thing to a literal rock bottom in the universe and see how you look when you get up."

"Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt." Azazel declared cheerfully. "Dad put me in time-out, remember? If I do say so myself, it's done wonders for my complexion." He dramatically flourished a hand through his golden bangs, shaking his head a bit. From somewhere, a crowd of female squeals sounded.

I sighed, feeling it become easier and easier to remain standing with each passing second. "So, what's your verdict on this 'test'?"

Azazel hummed. "Well, your magical power's at almost four times what it was before. That's consistent with the usual difference between a First Level Fallen and a Second Level. There hasn't really been a change in your constructs' density, though."

I furrowed my brow, trying to recall what that meant. I couldn't remember Azazel ever mentioning it…

"Ah, I guess I didn't mention it before?" He asked, mostly to himself, before shrugging. "Well, when we're talking about Light constructs, 'density' means mostly the same thing as it does normally. It's about how much magical power the construct holds - the more power you can fit into a construct without changing the size, the higher the Light density."

I nodded. "Alright. So I guess denser constructs are stronger?"

"Got it in one." Azazel affirmed. "But they don't just get harder to break. Once you push them past a certain point - I've coined the term 'Light Oversaturation Threshold' for it - they start to become more real."

I frowned. "More…real?"

"It's the best description I can give you without speaking Seraphic." He shrugged. "I could stand here for a year talking at you and we wouldn't cover more than the basics of _why_ it happens, but the QED is this.

"Magic, no matter what form it's in, is fundamentally the act of going against the natural laws of our reality. It's cheating the system, but to do that it has to feed back _in_ to that system. So, when you get enough magic in one place, reality sometimes starts to creep back up that connection."

"I _think_ I get it…" I mused. "So, if I made a Light spear and then just kept compressing more and more Light into it…"

"Then after a certain point it would become _more_ of a spear." Azazel nodded. "It would pierce deeper, fly farther, strike truer, slash wider...everything about it that was 'Spear' would become more pronounced."

"So it's just like Reinforcing something?" I asked, and Azazel nodded, before eyeing me.

"Y'know, for a Scot you seem to know a lot about Japanese media." He noted.

I shrugged, too tired to be embarrassed. "I dropped the BBC after they killed Tennant and went looking for my entertainment elsewhere. Japan fit my crazy."

Azazel kept eyeing me for a moment, then shrugged. "Eh, who am I to judge? Anyway, that comparison works. If you want to keep on that vein, then what you're doing right now is basically Projection with no Reinforcement or Alteration. It's not even Tracing, yet."

I sighed, nodding. "So, more training?"

"More training." Azazel affirmed. "Still, it's not all bad news!" With a grin, he reached into thin air, drawing my gaze immediately to the point where his wrist vanished. It reappeared a second later with a flourish, bearing a book with a yellow cover that he tossed to me underarm.

I caught it, looking down to find the words 'Seraphic for Dummies' staring back at me. Looking up with as deadpan an expression as I could muster, I found the Fallen Governor grinning back at me. _"Really?"_

"I'll have you know that book is the only one of its kind." He told me reproachfully. "While you were off ruining my poor subordinates' weekend plans with your new friend, I was labouring to produce this detailed guide for the enlightenment of the ignorant mass - that is, you."

My eyebrow twitched. "I thought you said you were messing around in your lab? That's how you knew something had happened, right?"

Azazel gave me a slightly affronted look. "Of course! Haven't you heard of multitasking? I just wrote the book in my mind and then Conjured it when I was done."

' _He wrote and memorised an entire book mentally, then pictured the entire thing flawlessly in his mind's eye, text and all, before giving it form with magic.'_ Fucking christ, every time I thought I had a grasp on where I stood in the world someone would pull out some bullshit like this and I suddenly had to set myself back another few rungs on the ladder.

I sighed, glancing down to check if I had a pocket that would hold the book. Considering my shirt hadn't had any _before_ it was scattered over a couple of square miles and my jeans were closer to being shorts now and might well give up completely if I put significant weight on them, I decided to just carry it. _'Or, I could remember my magic.'_

Pushing away the urge to facepalm, I produced the same shin-length coat of Light I'd made use of the last time Azazel and I 'sparred'. A moment's thought created a pocket on the inside that was large enough to hold the new book, and I tucked the volume away to read later, in my room. "Well, thanks, I guess."

"You're welcome!" Azazel beamed. "I'll leave you be for now - I know how much you enjoy my presence, but alas, there are infinitely more bountiful demands on my time…" I started to form a mallet in my right hand, "like science!"

My eyebrow twitched. _'He did that on purpose.'_ I looked remorsefully at the mallet in my hand. I _really_ wanted to throw it at him, but it didn't feel right. With a sigh, I prepared to dissolve it.

"Well, and that convent in Italy I've had my eye on-"

'There _we go.'_

Azazel vanished in a bright flash of light and a burst of laughter a second before the mallet passed through where his head had been, spinning end-over-end. The tool's head buried itself in the wall of the Grigori Headquarters beyond that point, then vanished, leaving part of the wall to collapse downward.

I grimaced to myself, tapping the outside of my coat over where Azazel's book was sitting. _'Light density and Seraphic, huh...well, I guess Conjuration and pocket-dimensions can wait a while. If I just sneak around the side of the building then it's not like anyone'll see me anyway-'_

"TRAAASHBAAAG!"

' _...when it_ fucking _rains.'_

* * *

 **Author's Note**

 **So, apparently I was lying when I said I was going to go work on Music. Sorry, that's my bad - I'm playing with the idea of re-writing most of the earlier part of Music and it's distracted me from writing its continuity. In any case, here's another chapter of The Light Unfettered, so please don't kill me.**

 **Reviews:**

 **-RevansStories, Ch. 3 - Even if they could, in fact, take Drew as a human rather than a Fallen, I don't think it would change very much. As for Tiamat...well, I really have no idea how that would work.**

 **-Dustier7, Ch. 3 - Glad to know you enjoyed the chapter :)**

 **-Maddragon1, Ch. 1 - Thanks very much for the cookie; I'm sure it'll be delicious.**

 **-xanothos, Ch. 3 - If you can get me the phonetic English translation of ZA WARUDO in a southern accent, I'll gladly edit the chapter.**

 **-Darkjaden, Ch. 3 - Yeah. I'd like to write a fic focussed on a purely human character in DxD at some point, but a big part of wanting to write this was to play with Fallen magic, so meh.**

 **-Awayuki, Ch. 3 - Alright, more ideas for when I eventually get around to considering pairings in this story. Thanks! Also, if I'm reminding you of Netero, then I think I'm doing a good job!**

 **-'Ibn', Ch. 3 - Eheh...I guess the wait was less than it might have been. I'm glad to hear that Americans other than my friend Ness (who should never be used as a standard of normality) find Maverick to be a good character and not an incredibly offensive portrayal :)**

 **-Warlord of Chaos, Ch. 3 - Well, I'll try to live up to your expectations! Bad English isn't a problem, I read it often enough from people who are meant to be fluent in it. Also, glad to hear you like Maverick :)**

 **-Blacksword Zero, Ch. 3 - Glad to know you enjoyed the chapter. As far as Raynare is concerned, there will be more seen of her in the future, and that's all I'm going to say.**

 **-Mzr90, Ch. 3 - Thanks!**

 **-The Ultimate Balance Chaos, Ch. 3 - Wow, your favourite fic? Man, that means a lot! I'm glad you enjoy it :)**

 **-Pyrowolf21, Ch.3 - I'll do my best!**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 3, Oct. 9 - I can neither confirm nor deny that Drew will eventually manifest a Reality Marble :P**

 **-Naruto-Uzu-Uchiha, Ch. 3 - I'd quite like to write a story about a purely human protagonist at some point, but I really wanted to play around with Fallen Angel magic. On the bright side, Maverick will fill the slot nicely for this story :)**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 3, Oct. 9 - Thanks!**

 **-Lady Vanatos, Ch. 3 - Thank you very much!**

 **-sgolek1, Ch. 3 - Don't worry, Drew won't be getting a Sacred Gear; he'll be getting things done under his own power.**

 **-'Blades of Fury', Ch. 3 - I hope to highlight some differences between the various Supernatural species and Humans. However, a big point in this story is going to be based on why so many of them seem so human, so it'll mostly be little things peeking out from around the curtains, so to speak.**

 **-desdelor97, Ch. 3 - I'll do my best!**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 3, Oct. 11 - That's a rather astute observation you've got there. Also, I have literally no intentions as far as pairings go in this story, it could go any way at all.**

 **-Luxray-Vision, Ch. 3 - Illusions will become a part of Drew's kit later on, but for now they require a subtlety that he doesn't have. Right now, he's less of an Itachi and more of a discount Hal Jordon with a much more relaxed 'no-fatalities' policy. GIve him time, though…**

 **-'shadow', Ch. 3 - It was certainly the longest fight I've ever written; I wanted to capture the JoJo feeling of a fight that kept evolving as each fighter pulled out more and more tricks, sometimes making things up on the fly. It ended up being so fun I didn't want to stop, so I'm glad it was also fun to read. That's also an...** _ **interesting**_ **suspicion you've got there.**

 **-Lightsbane1905, Ch. 3 - Zombie apocalypse, sure. But apparently not alien invasion if the current president is any indication. I mean have you** _ **seen**_ **him? His hair probably has its own dietary requirements and he glows orange in the dark.**

 **-ARSLOTHES, Ch. 3 - That's the long-term plan.**

 **-Azriel Nightsilver, Ch. 3 - Cringy...how? I mean, if there's some cringe factor in it, I'd be quite glad to know what you think needs changing.**

 **-'HopefulGuest', Ch. 3 - Hmm. Kalawarner, eh? She's basically a blank slate as a character, so I can do what I like with her backstory...well, it's something to think about, at least.**

 **-Trougue, Ch. 3 - Well, I don't know about** _ **revolutionary**_ **; after all, there are fics like A Demon Among Devils in this section (that fic is near the top of my all-time favourites). Still, it's true that a non-harem or gen fic is a rare find in this section, and there can be a depressing lack of proper characterisation in some places. I'm glad you enjoyed it!**

 **-Hashirama 1710, Ch. 3, Oct. 19 - Well, I'll take that as you liked the chapter!**

 **-'Guest', Ch. 3, Oct. 19 - Be proud of yourself, Ness laughed his ass off at your review. Also, yeah, he basically is.**

 **-Hashirama 1710, Ch. 3, Oct. 19 - I can neither confirm nor deny that Drew will eventually manifest a Reality Marble :P**

 **-Trougue, Ch. 1 - Oh my God I laughed so hard at that name xD Well, I can neither confirm nor deny that Drew will eventually manifest a Reality Marble, I'm afraid. But if he** _ **did**_ **, there'd already be a name picked out.**

 **-Squadpunk 2.0, Ch. 3 - I have no plans as far as pairings are concerned, so it's just about anything goes. And don't worry, there'll be a story behind Kronos.**

 **-marsolino, Ch. 3 - I did get a bit carried away writing it, but I guess I was just having too much fun to stop soon. There shouldn't be many fights of that length in the story, but if there are more I'll try to vary them more to keep things interesting.**

 **-'Tiberiuas', Ch. 2 - Well, Azazel is interested in him because he's something new, and Azazel just loves new things to play and tinker with. Shemhazai and Baraqiel don't care much about him, whereas Raynare seems him as a way to get closer to Azazel and Mittelt has a bone to pick with him for reasons that will be explained. Drew isn't really all that strong as far as these things are measured - he has an imagination that works well with his inherited abilities, but he can't actually use them all that well, and he lacks knowledge of most Fallen disciplines. You'll see what I mean next chapter. And as far as Declan is concerned - he wasn't almost a match for Natsu; Natsu kicked his ass. He's nowhere near that level. He's competent, but he's not even an A-class Mage, let alone Natsu's borderline S-Class. As strong as Shadow Gear combined? Keep in mind that Shadow Gear aren't a combat team. They aren't** _ **meant**_ **to fight and they don't really train for it. In the early chapters, they're really kind of pushovers. Still, you can be sure I'll try to make as much use of this setting as possible, and I'll do my best in my writing.**

 **-entelejent, Ch. 3 - There's your answer. There's no reason he** _ **can't**_ **, except that he doesn't have the knowledge or practice to use his powers that well yet. He's only just starting, remember.**

 **-Hashirama 1710, Ch. 2 - Drew was eighteen when he died. Also, yes, he could; but he's a long way from re-modelling his body to do that kind of thing consciously, and even further from doing it casually.**

 **End of Reviews**

 **Phew - well, now to go work on the next chapter of Press Ganging! ...Wait, did I say that out loud?**

 **(PSIness11): DID SOMEONE SAY, PRESS-GANGING?**

 **...Shit.**


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